


Take the Leap

by Kari_Kurofai



Series: Parkour!Verse [1]
Category: Rooster Teeth/Achievement Hunter RPF
Genre: M/M, Trigger warning for discussions of child abuse!!!!!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-30
Updated: 2014-08-30
Packaged: 2018-02-15 08:56:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 45,460
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2223087
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kari_Kurofai/pseuds/Kari_Kurofai
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ray's always been persistently introverted, that's why a long distance friendship with Michael had been perfect. He didn't need to go anywhere unless Michael came to visit. He could stay away from parties, and bars, and pools, and people who've had one shot too many. But now that he's been hired at Achievement Hunter, that doesn't work so well anymore. And Michael's tired of Ray always ditching out, always staying home. "Team Used To Be Better Friends," he calls them now. Well, that fucking sucks. </p><p>Parkour was meant to be a distraction from that, some sort of stupid rebellion to prove that Ray can get out of his apartment once in awhile. Despite any injuries it causes, at the end of the day and by Ray's terms, he's still <em>safe</em>.</p><p>Too bad he can't decide which he needs more, security, or Michael.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Take the Leap

**Author's Note:**

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> Art by [TeamRTist](http://teamrtist.tumblr.com/)
> 
> Written as part of the [Ragehappy Fic Bang Event](http://ragehappybigbang.tumblr.com/masterlist/)
> 
> Inspiration for this fic came from [I-Am-The-Sundance-Kid](http://i-am-sundance-kid.tumblr.com/), whom with I shared a lengthy conversation about how depressing a name Team Used To Be Better Friends is, and how and why they became that way. I ended up writing the outline for this fic immediately afterwards.

After awhile, Ray looses track of time. Not like most people do, either. He doesn’t spend hours going about a task only to look up at a clock and exclaim, “My, where has the time gone?” or any such bullshit. No, he literally loses track of time. It’s more like he’ll go to bed on a Tuesday night and fall in and out of sleep only to fully wake up on a Thursday. It’s not like it matters anymore anyways, does it. He has no where to be, no one to see, and a whole heap of nothing to do from now until infinity. And it fucking sucks.

To be honest, Ray was never much of a go-out-and-do-things person in the first place. But he’s noticed the days slipping into weeks slipping into months where he can’t even remember the last time he actually had a reason to wake up, and it’s starting to wear on him. Really, it is an actual freaking miracle that he hasn’t been evicted yet, his monthly unemployment checks barely allowing him to scrape by on rent and food most of the time. He wonders if he stopped picking them up, or stopped using them to pay the landlord, if anyone would even come check to see if he’d died or not.

Which is totally not going to happen, by the way. Ray might not have a purpose in getting up most days, but he hasn’t quite yet reached the point where that’ll make him devalue his own life. Besides, it’s not like he’s been sitting on his ass and doing nothing this whole time. He does stuff. He does lots of stuff.

Like launder his old Gamestop shirt along with the rest of his clothes just in case he ever gets desperate enough to go crawling back there. Or drag his feet all the way to the unemployment office to pick up one of the aforementioned checks (he thinks the desk clerk there is starting to get dangerously annoyed with him). A lot of days he plays video games, records his runs on his capture card, and uploads them on the Rooster Teeth site while trying not to seem to be obviously fronting “ _Hire me, hire me HIRE ME!_ ” by doing so.

And sometimes, sometimes Michael calls.

This morning is one of those times. Ray rolls out of bed as soon as his cell phone buzzes its way off the edge of the mattress. It doesn’t have very far to fall, and neither does he as Ray hits the carpet the mattress is situated right on top of shoulder first and hopelessly tangled in his mound of blankets. “It’s too early for this,” he grumbles into the receiver.

“It’s almost three in the afternoon, chucklefuck!” Michael snaps immediately.

Ray struggles to squirm over onto his stomach and prop his chin up with a hand so he can stare at the closed blinds over one of the two total windows in the apartment, “Your time or my time? Also, I can’t tell. The sun doesn’t exist in New York. But thanks for the literal wakeup call.”

“Did you seriously just get up?” Michael asks. His tone is a pitch or five lower this time, and Ray hears him shuffling things around on the other end of the line. “Dude, this is getting ridiculous.”

“ _Dude_ ,” Ray mocks in his best imitation of his friend, “My life is ridiculous.”

“Thank you for that lovely middle school retort,” Michael says steadily. “Now go get up on the right side of the bed so I don’t have to yell and hang up on you.”

Ray pulls the phone away from his ear and glances at the date. Wednesday. Michael probably spent the afternoon filming Rage Quit. Wednesday means extra-testy Michael. Joy. After a minute of struggling with his blankets and Michael grumbling incoherently in his ear, Ray manages to flail his way back onto the bed, and then promptly roll off onto the other side sans-covers. “There, now I’m on the right side,” he announces with unwarranted pride.

Michael groans, “You didn’t just-”

“I did.”

“I hate you.”

“Love you too,” Ray grins. “Now, is there a particular reason you’re calling? Or did you just want too hear my awesome voice?”

The huff Michael lets out is significantly softer, fonder, and it sends a brief thrill down Ray’s spine that he patently ignores. “You up for doing some Internet Box this weekend?” Michael asks. Ray tries not to pout, he really does, but he must not try hard enough because Michael immediately adds, “Don’t sulk, that’s not the only reason I called, dumbass. Just answer the question so we can get down to business.”

“It’s not like I have anything better to do than be the life our sad podcast party.” Sometimes, Ray really misses the days when phones had cords because at least then he had something to do with his hands while he talked, because right now he’s just sort of fumbling awkwardly with the edge of the undershirt he’d fallen asleep in. Then again, corded phone days were also Xbox-less days, so he doesn’t miss them that much. “What else did you call for?”

There’s always some vague hope in the back of Ray’s mind whenever his cell phone flashes Michael’s name, some weird and admittedly pathetic flair of wishful thinking that reminds him of the days where a phone call from Michael meant a visit wasn’t far behind. But that was when there’d only been a train ride between them, not half a fucking country.

And he’s proud of Michael, he really is. Getting a job with not only Rooster Teeth, but Achievement Hunter was like best thing to ever happen to the guy. Hell, Ray wasn’t even jealous. He was just . . . Well, there wasn’t really a word for the feeling. Sad, maybe? Except that seemed too simple. And lonely wasn’t right either, because quite frankly, Ray very much liked being alone. He liked staying inside and keeping to himself, it was more comfortable that way. Which is why meeting Michael through the Rooster Teeth community had been perfect. It wasn’t a friendship that required outings to parties or pools or any of that shit Ray has never been fond of. Sure, he’d taken Michael out on a romp through the city once, but that wasn’t really the same. He wasn’t forced to interact with anyone except Michael. And every other time they’d met it had been just two dudes and a bunch of video games. So, no, Ray’s not lonely, not in the traditional way at least. And he’s not really sad, either.

There’s no word for the feeling you get when you find yourself standing still while the whole world keeps spinning without you.

“Well it certainly wasn’t to hear your stupid voice,” Michael snorts in his ear, reminding Ray that he’s in the middle of a conversation. “I get enough of that shit over Xbox Live, thanks.”

“Rude.”

“This is just my weekly call to make sure you haven’t yet devolved into a fungus in that crap apartment of yours.” Though Michael says it lightheartedly, Ray can still hear a tinge of actual concern on the edge of his voice.

Part of him honestly wishes Michael would stop caring. There are like seven billion fucking people on the planet and the fact that Michael takes time out of his day to check up on just one of them, just Ray, always sends an uncomfortable jolt straight through him. Here he is rotting away in the middle of a city that wouldn’t notice if he tripped down a manhole, and Michael still calls. If Ray were the sort to wax poetics, he might akin those phone calls to rays of light through the clouds. But he’s not, so cut that shit out. Instead, Ray simply sighs, pulls his knees up underneath his chin, and tucks the phone against his shoulder. “I’m a big boy, Michael,” he says slowly. “I can take care of myself.”

“You’re short as fuck, jobless, and I know for a fact you haven’t bought a new shirt in six months,” Michael counters. “So I beg to differ.”

“I picked up like six shirts from the Rooster Teeth Booth at PAX!”

“I gave those to you.”

“And I slipped forty bucks into your pocket.”

“Which I put back in your wallet during dinner.”

Ray purses his lips, eyebrows furrowing, “I’m not a fucking charity case, Michael.”

There’s a pause, and Ray gets the feeling Michael’s been preparing for such a retort for awhile now. “Charity cases are those adds on TV that play Sarah McLachlan songs over pictures of starving puppies and children in Africa. Whereas you’re a friend that I worry about. Big difference. Oh, I almost forgot. You’re a dickhole, too.” When Ray doesn’t reply, Michael sighs. “Look, dude, just ask Geoff. Ask him for a job. You’re already like one of the top members of the community. And hell, at this point we regularly dump all the hard achievement guides on your shoulders to the point where we should technically be paying you. What’s it gonna hurt?”

“He could say no,” Ray whispers.

“He won’t.”

“You don’t know that.”

“And neither do you.” Ray curls his arms around his legs as he speaks, eyes fixed on the dingy carpet beneath his bare feet. “You and Gavin were asked to join, remember? He went out of his way to scoop you guys up. I don’t wanna be the asshole that has to beg. It’s pathetic.”

Silence lingers on the other end of the line, and Ray chews on his bottom lip while he waits, telling himself he doesn’t need Michael’s, or any other Achievement Hunter’s pity. If Geoff hasn’t bothered to ask him to join, then surely it’s because Ray isn’t anything special, hasn’t done something to stand out amongst the crowd. Yet. He will, Ray thinks, he has to.

Apparently, after nearly a minute off silent thought, all Michael has to offer is a hushed, “Ray . . .” That makes Ray close his eyes and suck in a shuddering breath.

“So, uh, how’s the weather there?” Ray says in a rush, desperate to change the subject away from his sad excuse for a life. He stands and makes his way towards the window, drawing up the blinds to catch a glimpse of the too-bright outside world. “Because there’s fucking snow everywhere here, I don’t know why I’m surprised.”

Michael laughs, and that sound is infinitely better, infinitely more soothing to Ray than anything else said between them since he woke up. “Sunny as always. If it ever snows here, it’ll be the first sign of the apocalypse. You should get out today, go make the most of the fact that New York actually has seasons.”

“I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about,” Ray mutters. “Here we have three types of weather. Smog, snow, and ‘oh shit I saw the sun for like half a second!’” Despite that, the snow does look oddly enticing. Which is saying a lot because implying that anything that exists outside is enticing to Ray is pretty much an oxymoron. “Besides, it’s not like there’s anything to do out there. It’s the city, dude. The snow doesn’t even get the chance to collect on the ground before it gets plowed away. I can’t so much as make a snowball unless I actively try and catch the flakes before they fall.”

He wanders away from the window and makes his way to the cabinet, tugging it open and staring at the measly contents inside. Two cans of soup and a box of Coco Puffs that has about one bowl’s worth left in it. His fridge isn’t much better, sporting only a couple of string cheese and an empty pizza box. Ray tosses the box into the trash, inwardly cursing the laziness of his past self, and grabs the Coco Puffs. He shoves his hand right in and stuffs some in his mouth. No point in using a bowl if there isn’t any milk. “Should probably go out anyways,” he says into the phone as he chews. “Not to appease you, though, you’re not the boss of me. I just need to make a grocery run.”

“Whatever you say, man,” Michael says. He sounds far away, like he’s no longer fully engrossed in their oh-so-interesting conversation. Ray hears a faint clinking noise and frowns. Michael’s put him on speaker phone while he does the dishes. What a dick. “Like you’ll even get anything important.” The clatter of dishes is joined by the squeak of a faucet handle and a rush of water. “You literally survive on a diet of Mountain Dew, potato chips, cereal, and pizza. I’ll be surprised if you live to be thirty.”

“You wish you could eat like me,” Ray scoffs. He keeps the phone pressed between ear and shoulder as he picks up various articles of clothing from the carpet, warily sniffing them for cleanliness. Laundromats are expensive, okay.

“Oh, I’ve tried,” Michael chuckles. “Ate an old Chick-fil-a sandwich off the desk at work once. Haven’t been the same since.”

“Wuss.” Ray manages to find a fairly acceptable hoodie and a pair of jeans and wiggles into them in a miraculous feat that doesn’t end with his phone on the floor. “Only big babies get food poisoning, and you know it.”

“Hmm,” Michael hums, and Ray can’t discern if that’s an agreement or not. “Well, I’d advise you not to be a big baby, then.” The sink turns off and Ray can hear Michael shuffling around the kitchen. “Food poisoning is no fucking picnic, and with you being alone and all you’d probably die and no one would find your body for years.”

Ray rolls his eyes and begins digging around under the mattress for his keys. “Jesus Christ, I’d at least hope you’d check up on me if I didn’t answer the phone for a few days. Also, you live alone too, numbnutt, and you survived. So I think I’d be fine.”

“But you forget I’m a resourceful and suave motherfucker who can take care of himself.”

“Barbara told me you basically crawled upstairs to her apartment and begged to be coddled while you were sick.” Ray lifts his hand into the air, a fist-pump of victory with his keys dangling between his fingers. “Sweet!”

“Find your keys?”

A smile breaks across Ray’s face, “Mind your own business.”

“Go to the store, you nerd,” Michael huffs. “And text me when you get back so I know you didn’t get mugged and kidnapped and sold as a sex slave. Geoff will flip if I take any longer of a lunch break.”

There’s a click and Ray finds himself with a silent phone pressed to his ear, Michael’s name and picture flashing with the little hang up sign below it.

This is how their conversations usually go. Michael calls, Ray answers, Michael hangs up without warning. Ray stares at his cell phone a little longer, simply breathing as he allows the thrum of New York traffic to rush back over him, filling in the dull ringing in his ears that always follows Michael’s calls. After a heartbeat he pockets it and crosses the small, cramped apartment space to pluck a jacket off the floor near the door. He shrugs it on and slips his feet into his shoes, hands checking his pockets for his thin wallet before he’s out the door and taking the stairs down to the ground floor two at a time. There’s a beat to his step that only shows up after talking to Michael, as though the brief bit of distant human interaction reignites a spark within him and keeps his life batteries running just a little longer.

He acknowledges the landlady, who as far as Ray knows actually lives in the god damn entryway so as to constantly spy on her tenants comings and goings, gifting her with a short nod before bounding out the door. The cold, snow dusted New York air hits him straight on and leaves him breathless. “Fuck!” he gasps, pulling his hood up and fisting his hands into the pockets of his coat. In all honesty, between looking out the window and getting dressed he’d completely forgotten it was snowing. “This is why I don’t go outside,” he mutters to absolutely no one. It’s not coming down enough to be a road hazard, the shit doesn’t seem to even be sticking to his coat let alone the ground. Which is of course the worst sort of snow, the crap that melts as soon as it touches you and leaves you soaking wet and miserable. Ray tucks his chin down into the collar of his coat and hurries onwards. Maybe if he walks fast enough he’ll make the four blocks to the nearest grocery store before that happens.

Winter in New York is the kind of stuff that looks prettier in postcards than it does in reality. Picturesque scenes of Central Park blanketed in white and roads lying empty save for a layer of snow are things of idyllic fantasy. Ray’s never seen a vacant snow-covered road here in his life. As for Central Park, while he’s never been himself (why the hell would he go there it’s just a bunch of trees, who cares?) Ray’s certain that the entire place is littered with dirty footprints left by children and joggers and annoying dog walkers even when there’s a blizzard. The City That Never Sleeps certainly doesn’t come to a standstill just for a bit of bad weather. Hell, even when the odd hurricane blows through people are more likely to carry on as usual than take a day off work.

Ray gets to the store out of breath and just as damp as he would have been if he’d walked. The sleeves of his coat are actually dripping snow and melt water off the ends and seriously what the fuck this is the reason people invented the indoors. The day the world pulls their collective heads out of their collective asses and either invent teleportation or build intricate underground roads that connect everything will be the day Ray dies happy. Sighing, he grabs a basket beside the door and begins the tedious task of grocery shopping.

The prices of the cereal aisle glare at him as Ray clutches a box of Fruit Loops between his hands. It’s when breakfast food starts to get expensive that you know things are dire, he thinks grimly, and exchanges the box for one of the store band ones. At this rate he’s going to end up holding up cardboard signs and begging on street corners by the time summer rolls around. Too bad that thought doesn’t make things any easier. Knowing he’s in trouble still won’t make Ray pick up the phone. Hell, it won’t even make him go and grovel at GameStop. It just makes him feel sick. Sick and helpless and worthless in a too-big world that doesn’t have time or space for idiots like him. Ray shoves the box into his basket between a bag of discount rack bagels and half a dozen cup ramen, turns on his heels, and heads for the self checkout station.

Michael is right. Michael’s always right. But Michael doesn’t get it. Hell, Ray doesn’t even get it, not really. He doesn’t understand why he keeps his eyes trained on the ground when he walks, why he’s far more comfortable with long distance friendships, or why the very thought of making a simple phone call makes his entire body freeze up. It’s bullshit, complete and utter bullshit, but it’s not going to change.

He thought it would, at first, when he agree to meet with Michael in the city, when he spent an entire day out on the town without feeling out of place, drained, and tense, and when after that he went to conventions and started lingering near the Rooster Teeth booth, secure beside people he knew and admired. In some ways, he supposed it did, sort of. It made it worth leaving the apartment to be with certain people. Society as a whole was another matter.

Ray holds his shopping bags in his left hand and his phone in his right as he walks back from the store, contemplating all of these things and all of the ways he could fuck up what he’s about to do. In situations like these people are inclined to think of all the worst possibilities. Like he told Michael, he doesn’t stand out. Rooster Teeth is well known for seeking out potential employees, not doing random hires. And yeah, Ray’s technically not completely random, but that doesn’t mean he has any more of a chance than the next Joe Schmoe who saunters into the office.

Screw it, he’ll starve before he begs for a job. It’s less embarrassing, anyways. Plus it’s not like anyone would care.

Well . . . No, that’s not true anymore, is it. Michael would care, right? He calls about every other day, he’d notice if Ray shriveled up into a homeless, poor little waif. Or at least that’s what his earlier tone had indicated, that helpless and agonized whispering of “Ray . . .” over the line that had made Ray feel like the biggest dickhead in the universe.

The bag in his left hand is too light, filled with the barest of essentials that look more like the groceries of a desperate college student than a grown-ass man. He has another check to pick up in a week, and by the looks the lady at the unemployment office keeps giving him with every passing month, Ray suspects he might not have many of those left. If he doesn’t get the job offer of his dreams soon, he really will have to crawl back to GameStop on his hands and knees. Or worse, his father’s bar. Ray shudders, nauseas at the very idea, and grips the phone in his right hand a little tighter.

The worst that could happen would be for Geoff to tell him no. It’ll be hard to take, but it won’t kill him (probably). And at best, he’ll get to play videogames for a living, he’ll get to get the heck out of this stupid city, and he’ll get to work side by side with Michael Rage Quit Jones every god damn day.

It’s that last thought that spurns him on, that has him scrolling through his contact list down to the G’s with a thrill of excitement bubbling up inside him. If he takes up roots in Austin, maybe he’ll get out a little more, coaxed to malls and movies and pizza by Michael’s charismatic, teasing smile, the same way he used to whenever they’d Skype just before their “bro dates.”

Snowflakes begin to cover his screen as Ray stares at the call button, daring himself to press it. The saying “Life waits for no one” comes to mind, and Ray swallows hard and smashes his thumb down on the touch screen.

Holding the thing up to his ear, Ray listens to it ring once, twice, before a click indicates the call being answered. There’s utter silence on the other end, and Ray gets the feeling he’s been set on speaker phone. Fan-fucking-tastic. He hopes Geoff is at home already and not in the office or something.

“Uh, hey, Geoff . . .” he starts, fumbling as the foreboding silence continues. “Really not helping my self esteem and nerves with the not-speaking thing, just an FYI. Anyways . . .” Ray twists the shopping bag in hand and tries not to freak out. He’s knows he’s working himself up, and tries to quell the panic brimming in his mind with a drawn out, deep breath. “I was wondering if you had a job opening? Maybe?”

For a second he thinks maybe Geoff’s hung up on him, he honestly wouldn’t be surprised, but after a heartbeat he hears a loud, choked laugh. “You know,” Geoff’s voice comes in clear over the line, “I would have hired you ages ago, all you had to do is ask. Sell your shitty apartment dude, you’re heading to Austin!”

Ray almost drops his phone in utter disbelief, breath hitching in his chest and his heart threatening to break free from his ribs. What?

“YEAH!” he hears Michael whoop, shortly followed by a thump that implies the other boy had leapt into the air with that exclamation. “I told you! I fucking told you!”

“Yeah,” Ray huffs over the sound of the rest of the crew laughing, “Yeah, you did.”

OoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoO

“What do you even have to pack? Like two balls of lint and that same pair of checkered flats you wear everyday?”

Ray lifts one of the aforementioned shoes up to the laptop camera, “Dude, Michael, these are called Vans, not flats. This isn’t a teenage girl’s bedroom on prom night.”

“Which explains why you have three different pairs of them in various colors,” Michael deadpans. “Don’t you sass me, fuckhead, I can see them lined up by the door.” He stretches, arms reaching out of sight beyond what the frame of the Skype window shows of his apartment in Austin.

It’s late for New York, and Texas isn’t far behind on the world clock, but Ray isn’t even the slightest bit tired. Considering he’s barely stopped moving since calling Geoff that afternoon, that’s quite a feat. Between running his groceries back to his house and going right back out to peruse the dumpsters of every Walgreens within walking distance for boxes, he should be far more exhausted than he is. Yet here he is, shoving shit into boxes at two in the morning, completely and utterly wired with excitement. He pauses, pair of white-checked vans still in hand as he observes Michael’s languid arch out of the corners of his eyes, noting the brief flash of belly as his t-shirt hikes up with the movement, and then quickly chucking his shoes into the nearest cardboard container when Michael’s attention refocuses on him.

“I have four buy the way,” Ray says when Michael lifts an uncomfortably knowing eyebrow at him. “Four pairs of vans. One of them has stripes.”

“Oooh, so classy,” Michael mocks. “Tell me more about your shoes, they’re so interesting.”

Ray snorts, “If you’re bored of me you can log out any time, buttmunch.” He shuffles out of frame, returning with a heap of fluorescent green game cases. “Should probably try and dump some of these off at GameStop before I go, huh.” He lifts up a copy of _Bolt_ and shudders.

Michael has the gall to burst into laughter, and Ray glowers. “No, no,” Michael snickers, “Definitely keep that one. Like put that shit up on the wall as a trophy of your trauma.”

Unceremoniously, Ray drops the game onto a bare space of floor. “Fuck that, it’s starting off the Goodbye Pile. Next.”  
  
Despite Ray’s earlier suggestions, he’s actually quite relieved when Michael doesn’t sign off.

Company is something people often take for granted, content in their fleeting moments of solitude like silence is the best blessing on earth. But when you grow used to being alone, become accustomed to waking to an empty apartment and fuck-all to do, it starts to wear on you. Every time Michael bothers to check up on him, to Skype him or call him or simply send him a text with some anecdote about his life, Ray is filled with a crushing, breathless feeling of relief. It isn’t hard to get used to silence, to get to the point where even the sound of a dripping faucet becomes unbearable, and there have been days where even though he’s severely out of food, he doesn’t even want to venture outside to the store. Ray knows that it’s bad, just like he knows a lot of things he doesn’t want to admit to, but that doesn’t change anything. He likes the silence, but he likes company, too.

He likes the vibration of his phone, alerting him to one of Michael’s angry wakeup calls. He likes the warming up tone of his Skype window as it links up over thousands of miles to Michael’s apartment in Austin. He likes the way Michael always answers and makes the calls as if it’s the most tedious thing in the world, and yet laughs like his lungs are filled with nothing but sunbursts meant only for Ray to experience.

The fact that he almost never calls Michael first is something he doesn’t like to dwell on. Part of it is, you know, the crushing awkwardness of making phonecalls regardless of who you’re calling, but really, Ray sometimes wonders if he might be unconsciously testing Michael.

It’s not like he’s never had friends before, he’s not a complete loser, thank you very much. But in the rush of life and the city, it’s all too easy to lose those people, to fall between the cracks to the point where they stop noticing you. After Ray quit working at his father’s bar, a lot of his high school friends lost interest in him, the appeal of under the table alcohol having vanished and left one much less interesting teenager. And his remaining friends had hooked him up with the GameStop gig, which he’d also quit after getting shafted on hours by a manager who mistook his quietness for sass. Once he no longer saw them everyday, he just simply stopped hearing from them. It’s not that he’s angry about it all, he gets it, he really does. He understands how easy it can be to evaluate one’s connections and choose to cut them because the most simple thing in the world is realizing you just don’t fucking care. Honestly, he’s dealt with a lot of things that way, his job, certain members of his family, his friends. They may not have called him, but Ray didn’t try either, he’s equally at fault.

Maybe he’s waiting for Michael to stop calling, though whether that’s to test Michael or to test himself, he’s unsure.

He’d like to think he’d call back, like to think he’d fight to keep Michael in his life. Except those kinds of decisions can’t really be made in advance. He thinks that now, but as who knows how it would all go down if he finds himself staring at a long-silent phone in his hands.  
“So you going to mooch off of one of the guys or what?” Michael asks, breaking Ray’s long-running train of thought. “I stayed with Jack when I first got here, and if Gavin lived with Geoff for like, ever, even before he became a permanent employee, so maybe you-”

Ray cuts him off with a silencing hand held in the direction of his laptop. “Wait, pause. I thought Gavin was still living with Geoff. What’s with the past tense?”

Michael rolls his eyes, “I guess he’s thinking about moving in with Lindsay so they can start their venerable cat farm or whatever. I don’t know. He’s just been talking about packing up his shit, and I try to keep my nose out of it.” He sniffs disdainfully, “Everyone in this office is way too forward with information about their love lives. Had to listen to Brandon brag about his fabulous lay last week, which was mega gross even despite the fact that, while he never mentioned anyone by name, we were all very aware that Jordan was his bed partner.”

Ray wrinkles his nose, “Yeah, it’s never fun to hear about people you know kanoodling.” He turns back to sorting through his games, tossing _Cars 2_ into the pile of shit to sell and/or burn. God, why does he buy these things in the first place, let alone play them?

“Anyways,” Michael says, “Who are you going to stay with? That should probably be something to look into before you fly out here.”

“Can’t I stay with you?” Ray mumbles without thinking. He hears a weird choking sound from Michael, but doesn’t think anything of it. Winter is flu season after all. “I mean wouldn’t that be the best option? It’d be a little awkward if I stayed with Geoff or Jack or anyone. They’re great guys, but I don’t really know them too well other than our brief meetings at conventions and interactions through emails.”

“I, uh, no.” Michael says quickly. “Dude, I don’t even have a spare bedroom. You can’t live on a sofa for four to six months, that’d be terrible!”

Ray hums an agreeing sound, though he’s tempted to argue that his current situation of a mattress on the floor isn’t much better than a couch. “Yeah, I’ve been to your place before, it’s cramped as fuck even with just you. Plus, we’d probably fight over who bought which Hot Pockets.” Personally, that sounds kind of fun, but Ray knows he’s just craving a change of pace from his current lifestyle of mundane solitude. Realistically, he’d get fed up with Michael after a week. Or so he tells himself. “Maybe I’ll just get some cheap ass hole in the wall. How much did your apartment cost?”

“More than you could afford on just your unemployment checks.”

“Hmmm. What else is within walking distance from the office?”

“I think Jordan lives in a kinda skeevy building nearby, you want me to ask him about it? It’s probably more in your price range.”

“If Jordan can stand it, I’m sure it’s actually a lot nicer than you’re giving it credit.” Ray opens his arms in a grand gesture around the meager contents of his current adobe. “I mean, I can only go up from here, right?”

Michael grins, “Definitely.”

OoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoO

Not so long ago getting on and off planes used to be the premise for some rather epic television and movie scenes. Epic here being synonymous with cheesy as fuck. But then shit happened, security and restrictions tightened, and the whole process became a lot more dull, and a lot more never wracking. For someone like Ray, who flies alone more often than not, navigating the bullshit that is an airport is a disaster. The fact that it’s a familiar airport doesn’t matter, he still ends up lost as fuck amidst the moving sidewalks and milling passerby. He gets stuck near some kind of children’s play area, boxed in by a sea of teenagers toting band instruments that are apparently using the spot as a meeting point and thoroughly blocking him from getting anywhere. The food court proves a distracting enemy as well, and he can’t help but pause to snag some Taco Bell before continuing on his way. The worst of it all proves to be the escalators though, which are broken, and the detour leads Ray to being so thoroughly lost he ends up circling around the things four times before reaching the ground floor successfully. By the time he actually makes it to baggage claim, he’s been off the plane for over an hour.

It’s a miracle his luggage hasn’t been stolen or shafted off by security for being suspicious, especially since it’s the only thing left on the carrousel when he gets there. Still, he takes the time to unzip the top of hit suitcase and take a quick peek inside to make sure there’s no obvious signs of looting. He’s sealing it all back up, satisfied that nothing seems amiss, when he hears someone yell his name.

Ray straightens up just in time to find himself with his arms full of giddily laughing Michael, and just barely manages to stay on his feet with Michael’s full weight leaning heavily against him.

“Took you long enough!” Michael beams, pulling back a little too soon for Ray’s tastes. His face is slightly flushed, like he’d run to do the flying leap of excitement he’d just displayed, and Ray catches sight of Geoff and Jack approaching from a good fifty feet away, where Michael must have been only moments ago as well. “Didja get held up at the food court?”

“Something like that,” Ray says. His attention is mildly distracted by where Michael is still holding him by the shoulders. “Were you guys waiting all this time? I thought I was just supposed to call you after I got my bags and shit.”

“We wanted to surprise you.”

“ _Michael_ wanted to surprise you,” Geoff corrects as he reaches them. He holds out a hand, and Ray shakes it eagerly. “Which is why we’ve been dicking around here forever. Got all your stuff, kid?”

“All of it that was on the plane,” Ray replies. “I have a handful of things being sent over on a van later this week though.”

Geoff waves a hand, “I don’t give a shit, kiddo, so long as we can get the fuck out of here ASAP. Place is dull as dicks, and full of dicks.” He casts a sidelong glare at a nearby security guard as he speaks.

Michael snorts and elbows Ray in the ribs, “We got told off for standing around too long, I guess we looked like suspicious terrorists or whatever. Although why they decided we were fishy when that dude,” he points to a man sitting on the edge of the baggage turnstile who’s staring deeply into a Styrofoam to-go container of Chinese food like it holds the god damn secrets of the cosmos, “has been sitting like that for, kid you not, around twenty minutes, probably high out of his mind, is beyond me.”

“Little too far from four twenty for that,” Ray chides.

Lifting Ray’s dropped duffle bag from the floor, Michael hefts it over one shoulder and jerks a thumb across the opposite one, towards the doors leading to the parking complex behind them. “Better get scooting then, ‘fraid if I leave Gav in the car too long I’ll get arrested for animal abuse.”

“Idiot would forget to roll down the windows when it’s hot if we didn’t leave a sticky note of instructions on him on the dashboard,” Jack teasingly agrees.

Despite the significant decrease in longitude, Ray still shivers a little when they step away from the immediate warmth of the building. It’s just cold enough that he wishes he’d had the foresight to pull a hoodie out of his bag, but just warm enough that he refuses to be a pansy and ask Michael for his duffle back so he can do so now. Stubborn to the core, Ray folds his arms over his chest and attempts to will the goosebumps on his arms to recede before anyone can make a comment on them. For fuck’s sake, its probably only sixty degrees out.

Aside from a casual back and forth between Geoff and Jack about the number of “My child is an honor student at blah-bleh-blah school” they can count on their way to the car, there isn’t much to say. Personally, Ray’s a little bit too caught up in letting reality sink in to take a crack at conversation. Also, he’s thoroughly distracted by Michael’s shoulder brushing against his with every other step.

Seriously though, he might as well have left his brain back on the plane because the only concrete thoughts in his mind are that A.) he can’t believe he’s in Austin and he hasn’t even left the fucking airport parking garage yet to actually revel in the setting and B.) he can’t believe he’s in Austin with Michael, who is now officially his coworker. Mostly, it’s B, his most coherent wisps of thought practically screaming a mantra of “ _Michael, Michael, Michael!_ ”

It’s pathetic, he recognizes, to have missed someone so much even though they took the time out of the day to call you frequently, text you often, and stay up with you on skype until the butt crack of dawn at least once a week. But he did, god, he did. He’d missed Michael like one misses the fucking sun when it rains and hails for almost a week straight. Which is weird of course, as he’d never actually ever resided in a close proximity to Michael in which they could hang out in person on a regular basis. He hadn’t missed Michael when they were a train ride apart, separated by a single state line and only seeing each other occasionally when Michael didn’t have work and Ray was bored. Somehow, Michael taking up root in Austin was different though, so much more unexageratingly out of reach that even skype chats and wake up phone calls didn’t lessen the gap.

As if distance of miles was suddenly akin to distance of heart.

Ray rolls his eyes at the thought, annoyed by his own level of sappy cheese. None of that shit really matters now, does it. He’s here, Michael’s here, big whoop-de-fucking-doo. As far as he’s concerned, he’s going to pretend like they were never really ever apart. Easy as pie, right? Just brush aside any minor awkwardness, get to know the rest of the Rooster Teeth staff as well as Michael does, start hanging out together again, and everything will slot perfectly into place just the way Ray likes it to be. Simple, effortless, and completely surrounded by video games. What more could he ask for?

Bad question, Ray could technically ask for quite a few things, many of which he’s very carefully sealed away at the back of his mind as impossibilities far out of his reach. It’s all about baby steps though, because honestly, he’d once thought being here, having the chance to work with Rooster Teeth and Achievement Hunter an impossibility too.

“So, where’s my desk gonna be?” Ray asks suddenly, realizing he’s been quiet for just a little too long.

“Well if you don’t mind having the corner seat by the shelf, we’ve set up a spot right next to me. It’s also ear the window though, so maybe you’ll finally get some sunlight.” Michael grins, giving Ray a playful elbow in the side.

Ray’s heart skips, just a tiny bit. “I’m not a plant, Michael,” he snorts in reply, unable to repress a smile of his own. “But heyo, next to the shelf means I never have to get out of my chair to grab a game. Prime seat right there.”

Michael lifts an eyebrow, “That’s what you’re excited about?”

“And that puts me right across from Geoff!” Ray adds, and raises a hand to high-five Geoff over Michael’s shoulder. Geoff plays along without a pause, nodding in agreement.

Michael sticks out his lower lip in a faux pout, “Well fine. It’s not like I had a Subway sandwich waiting for you in the car that I bought with my own money or anything because I know how shitty airline peanuts can be.” He folds his arms over his chest, huffily looking away as if Ray has actually mortally offended him.

Ray laughs and throws an arm around Michael’s shoulders. “Oh no, did I forget about my favorite, food providing, wake up calling nanny?” Michael narrows his eyes, genuine annoyance in his gaze this time. “Kidding, kidding,” Ray teases. “You’re good for tons of stuff besides that! Like-”

“Slamming doors,” Geoff butts in.

“Sucking dicks,” Jack adds.

“Carrying my bags to the car,” Ray gestures to the duffle still hanging from Michael’s shoulder. Michael starts to shrug it off, doing so as he walks briskly over to one of the drop offs at the edge of the parking structure. Ray jogs after him, “Whoa! No! Don’t do that!” He catches up just as Michael has his bag hanging from a hand over the edge of the cement railing. Geoff and Jack hang back, laughing their asses off. Ray knows Michael would never actually throw his bag off the side of the building, but he hesitates to grab for it anyways, just in case.

“Guess you didn’t miss me,” Michael sighs dramatically, swinging the bag dangerously in his hand.

“I totally missed you,” Ray says, and promptly winces at the complete lack of sarcasm behind that statement. Shit.

Michael perks up, “How much?”

“So much, dude.” Ray spreads his arms as far apart as he can. “Like this much.”

Apparently, this motion was exactly what Michael was waiting for, as he hurls Ray’s duffle straight at him, hitting him right in the gut and toppling Ray over onto the concrete floor. He stares down at him, smirking as Ray tries to wheeze the air back into his lungs. “Good,” he snickers, and practically skips off towards the car.

“Jack’s right! You suck dicks!” Ray yells after him once he can breathe again.

It takes them another ten minutes to find the car, and that’s only after Geoff starts walking around and clicking the beeper like it’s all some advanced game of Marco Polo. In the end, it’s a useless endeavor, since it’s Gavin’s startled screech that alerts them to the car’s position over the sound of the horn.

“Knew we left him in there for a reason,” Jack mutters, kicking one of the front wheels impatiently as Geoff takes his sweet time actually unlocking the thing.

While Ray has always been aware of Gavin Free, this is his first time actually meeting him. And as far as meetings go, having one’s first glimpse of a dude be him hanging out of the backseat window of a car like some kind of dog doesn’t really make for the best sort of impression. No one else is phased by this though, and each of them passes Gavin with a mocking ruffle of the young man’s hair that only serves to complete the canine comparison. Michael does it too, and then promptly ends the motion by shoving Gavin back into the car, rewarded with a gurgle from his coworker as he flops back onto the seat. Michael grabs Ray’s duffle and chucks that in to land heavily on Gavin’s chest before he swings the door open. “Ray, this is Gavin. He’s like the office jester.” Gavin squawks indignantly, and if Ray hadn’t heard the guy speak in videos before now, he’d be starting to wonder if the guy was incapable of human speech. Michael grins, rolls his eyes, and with an arm braced against the open door, adds, “Oh yeah, and my boi, of course.”

Something inside of Ray cracks, just a little, and sends an aftershock rippling through his very core. “Wh-what does that mean?”

Michael shrugs, “Boi, spelled with an I. I don’t know, just something Gav says. It’s kinda like a best friend though.”

“Oh, Michael,” Gavin coos appreciatively, the words turning into a squeal as Michael hauls a foot into the car to playfully kick at him.

Like flicking a switch, Ray feels every bit of him begin to shut down, to seal off in the face of this unexpected information. Sure, he’d known Michael and Gavin were close, but Gavin hadn’t been working there for that long, they shouldn’t be _this_ close.

Not when Ray has been in Michael’s life longer.

Ray shuts down, every fiber of him stalling to a numbing halt, save for a sharp, desperate flare of jealousy that rears in his heart.

It’s not fair. It’s not fair. He’s known Michael for years, more than triple the handful of months since Gavin even came to America permanently. How the hell . . . How did this even happen? He grits his teeth behind his lips, bites down on every cruel exclamation that tries to work its way out of his mouth.

In the end, who is Ray to talk, anyways? Wasn’t it always Michael who called him? Michael who came to him? Michael who urged him to go for the job because Ray was just too chicken-shit to do it on his own?

Ray’s never been one to overlook his own shortcomings, to refuse to acknowledge his flaws and weaknesses. But accepting that they have consequences, that’s entirely different. Losing jobs, losing high school companions, losing opportunities, he was used to that.

Realizing he’s in the process of losing Michael is much harder to swallow.

“Best friend, huh?” he says, forcing his tone to sound as indifferent as possible.

“We’ve been going for lunch time swimmies and bevs almost every day!” Gavin pipes up from inside the car.

Ray purses his lips, and slides in beside him, snatching his duffle back as he firmly places himself in the middle seat. “Is that even English?” he asks, a little harsher than intended.

Michael scoots in as well, closing the door and firmly trapping Ray in a sandwich between him and Gavin. “You’ll pick up on his Gavish lingo eventually, but yeah, no, it’s total nonsense.” Ray clutches his bag to his chest, instinctively beginning to curl in on himself in the face of the fond way that Michael speaks about the other man. _Gavish_? What the actual fuck.

He doesn’t uncurl for the rest of the car ride, trapped between Gavin and Michael, who talk over and around him the entire time, heedless of the silent figure between them. Ray keeps his eyes fixed on the scenery out the front windshield, taking in as much of Austin as he can, because at this rate it’s about to become as disappointing as everything else in his life tends to.

OoOoOoOoOoOoO

Ray’s apartment is small, basically the least expensive hole in the wall within walking distance to the office that he could find. But it’s both cheaper and bigger than his old apartment, so while Michael wrinkles his nose a little when they first step inside, Ray’s practically bouncing off the walls in excitement, his earlier distress over Gavin forgotten now that the other man has been dropped off at his own place. Out of sight and out of mind.

“Dude, I can put so much shit in here!” Ray exclaims, twirling his brand new keys around his finger. A quick tour reveals that the only “shit” to occupy the space thus far is a mattress Michael dragged into the single bedroom earlier that week before Ray arrived. “Fucking sweet, I can totally fit like twelve recliners in the living room alone.”

Michael side-eyes the aforementioned room, which is directly connected to the kitchen to create one big area for both lounging and dining. “You could fit three, tops. Just get a couch like everyone else.”

“Naw dude, gaming recliners. Those ones with the speakers in the sides. That’s the way to go.”

“Better start watering those money trees,” Michael huffs. He has Ray’s duffle tucked under one arm again, eyes scanning the empty rooms as he searches for a place to drop it. “And for the love of god, actually buy a bed frame this time. That should be your first priority. If that mattress is still on the floor in a month, I’m gonna throw it out the window.” The duffle is deposited in the middle of the kitchen counter, and Michael hoists himself up to sit beside it as Ray continues drooling over his new, and not-too-impressive apartment. “It’s like you didn’t even look at the pictures online before you bought it,” Michael deadpans while Ray oohs and aahs over a rather wide closet in the bedroom.

Ray peeks his head around the corner to glare at Michael, who just raises a knowing eyebrow. “So what if I didn’t.”

“One of these days your laziness is going to bite you in the ass in the form of an axe murderer,” Michael sighs. He turns back to the bare rooms, “Speaking of, that’s a rather ominous stain on the wall.” Lifting a hand, he points at the thing to direct Ray’s attention to it.

Ray edges out of the bedroom towards the kitchen and catches sight of what is indeed a disturbing stain on the wall to the right of the fridge. It’s not quite crimson, but its rusty brown hue is just as ominous as any shade of red would be. Most unnerving of all is the fact that, if looked at at just the right angle, it resembles a distorted human face. Almost unconsciously, Ray moves closer to reach out a hand towards it, the tips of his fingers tracing along the gaping mark like a mouth. He shudders as his palm settles against it. “Screw axe murderers, it’s ghosts I’m worried about.”

He doesn’t notice Michael moving behind him until he feels the other man’s breath intimately close to the back of his neck, sending another shiver up his spine. Michael’s shoulder bumps his back, and Ray watches wide-eyed as one of Michael’s hands settles over his across the marred wall, fingers splaying out between his own to touch the stain. “Ya scared?” Michael asks, his breath still hot against Ray’s beck.

“No,” Ray says instantly.

He’s infinitely disappointed when Michael moves away with a shrug, fingers only briefly sliding along Ray’s wrist before he pulls away completely. “I’d be a little freaked out,” he admits.

Ray purses his lips, unsure if he just missed out on being made fun of, or something far sweeter. Either way, the opportunity has passed, and Michael’s halfway across the room again, examining a squashed spider on the wall with fixed fascination. The moment, and whatever it might have lead to, is gone.

“You know, I uh . . .” Ray shuffles over to the counter where his duffle is still resting, and digs to the bottom for his beat up old laptop. “I downloaded a couple of those shitty Syfy shark movies a while back, haven’t gotten the chance to watch them yet since they’re kinda something you shouldn’t suffer through alone. Maybe . . .”

Michael glances up when Ray pauses, hands going to his pockets as he awkwardly straightens to face him fully. “Let’s get some food first, then we’ll see. I told Gav and Lindsay I’d try and meet up with them later, though.”

“Oh,” Ray says softly, a light, false smile forcing its way onto his face. “That’s okay. You can go now, if you want.”

“Food before booze,” Michael steps towards the door, lifting an arm in a way that makes Ray pause, confused. The hesitation is apparently annoying however, as Michael rolls his eyes, crosses the distance between them, and throws the raised arm over Ray’s shoulders to drag him towards the door. “If I don’t hang on to you, you’ll try and go back inside and convince me to just pick something up for you. Don’t even deny it.” Ray doesn’t. “Anywho, Wendy’s sound good?”

“Hell yeah. It’s like gourmet McDonalds!”

It’s the second time today that they’ve walked like this, and they practically trip down the stairs together, Michael purposefully burdening Ray with a little more weight than he can walk comfortably with. It’s good though, perfect in all the right ways that Ray will never admit to. Michael tries to trip him a few times, their feet getting tangled and their foreheads knocking together as they scuffle a bit on their way down the sidewalk. The Wendy’s is within sight of the apartment complex, but with all their horseplay it takes them almost twenty minutes to get there. The return route is much the same, and Ray keeps a tight hold on the bag of their spoils when Michael finally manages to make him truly stumble.

He’s sure he’s about to become very familiar with the gum on the concrete when Michael catches him by the arm before his knees even hit the pavement. “You’ve got way better balance than Gavin,” Michael says, laughing as he hauls Ray safely back to his feet. “He’d have already been flat on his face a bajillion times by now.”

Ray glowers, good mood rapidly unraveling at the seams. “That’s nice,” he mutters.

When Michael tries to throw an arm over his shoulders again Ray deftly shrugs it off, hurrying on ahead with the fast food bag clutched just as tightly to his chest as he’d clung to his duffle in the car. He knows he’s probably ruining the food with his immaturity, but he honestly doesn’t give a flying fuck.

Ray acknowledges that fully, too, that his bitter jealousy is nothing but juvenile. He’s the kid who refuses to share his toys. And like any kid, he figures, he’s just been spoiled. He had Michael practically to himself when they lived on the west coast, was free to hang out with him on his own terms and his alone. It was the perfect situation for him, and perhaps he grew just a little too accustomed to it. Kids get over things like that, though, eventually.

Ray will too. Or at least that’s the hope. He’ll sulk and pout about it for awhile, upset by the revelations that Michael’s world doesn’t revolve around him anymore, and never really has, but he’ll get over it.

Probably.

Michael trails behind as Ray fumbles with the code to get into the apartment building, wishing he’d written on his hand or something until Michael draws up beside him and curtly punches it in for him. Ray goes in first, making a beeline for the stairs and nearly colliding headfirst with some girl coming down them.

“Jesus!” he exclaims, barely dodging in time. As it is, he just about falls backwards down the stairs, his only saving grace Michael’s firm hand settling against his spine to keep him upright. They stand to the side to let her by, but the girl pauses, eyebrows climbing high as she takes a good look at them. She’s pretty, dark hair and eyes and miraculously shorter than Ray, which is saying something.

“You’re some of those Rooster Teeth guys, right?” she says slowly, unsure.

“Um,” Michael brilliantly utters.

“Sorry,” she says immediately, flustered. “I didn’t mean to pry. I’ve just been hearing a lot about you guys lately because I do some video game streams on Twitch, so sometimes people in the chat talk about you. The office is just a couple blocks from here too, so . . .” She waves a dismissive hand, “Never mind, sorry to bother you. I’ll just . . .” She jerks a thumb in the direction of the door leading outside, and begins to make her way down the rest of the stairs.

Michael watches her go for a moment before he moves his hand up to the collar of Ray’s shirt, hooking his fingers into it and spinning the other man around to face the girl’s retreating back. “Hey!” he calls after her. She stops, looking at them over her shoulder. Michael gives Ray a little shake. “This is Ray, he’s new to the building.”

She blinks, “Uh, okay. I’m Tina.”

“Cool! See you around,” Ray says as brightly as he can make himself sound. As soon as she’s out the door however, he’s twisting out of Michael’s grip and hissing, “What the fuck was that for! That was mortifying!”

Michael shrugs, “Nothing. Just thought you needed to start making more friends.”

Ray grits his teeth, that deep-seated envy flaring up again, this time splashed with a hint of hurt. “I thought I had you,” he says before he can stop himself.

Briefly, Michael’s eyes widen, a quick flash of startled surprise that vanishes as quick as it comes. “Ray,” he says gently, and Ray’s already stepping back, the tone a warning all its own that he isn’t going to like what’s about to be said. “We’ve barely seen each other in ages. Of course we’re friends, but it’s . . . I worry about you sometimes, okay? You need more people in your life than just me.”

Ray wants to retort, wants to yell that he doesn’t need anyone else, never has and maybe never will. Every atom of his screams to tell Michael that, to confess that half the reason he even came to Austin was just to be with him, near him, but nothing comes out. Instead, he just breathes for a second, in and out until he feels the bitterness begin to soothe itself and he can steadily meet Michael’s gaze again.

“Go out with Gavin and Lindsay,” he says stiffly. “Get drunk off your ass, whatever. I have stuff to unpack.”

Ray turns, and his heart stutters a little as Michael’s hand grasps his elbow.

“Ray, no,” he says, barely audible. “I . . . You should come with us.”

“I don’t drink,” Ray reminds quietly, and jerks his arm away.

“Then have a fucking coke then!” Michael pleads.

“Goodnight, Michael,” Ray says curtly, and practically runs the rest of the way up the stairs, forgetting he has Michael’s half of the food still with him until he’s already slammed and locked the door to his too-empty apartment behind him.

OoOoOoOoOoOoO

It’s Ray’s general policy not to expect much from anything or anyone. It’s one the many reason’s he’s ended up where he is. He never expected much from his friends, so he wasn’t disappointed when they left. He never expected much from school, so when he discovered he wasn’t very good at anything, at least not enough to pursue it into college, he didn’t feel lost. He never expected much from society, so when he was shafted with poor hours and even poorer colleagues at his Gamestop job, he quit rather than fight for it.

Where he went wrong with Michael was expecting too much.

Ray’s well aware that other people don’t see the world through the same tint of glass he does. Most people don’t fixate themselves on one thing or one person and narrow their vision to encompass that one thing and only that thing. Ray’s life consists of a very small, tight bubble of comfort. He doesn’t leave his apartment unless it’s absolutely necessary or required, he doesn’t enjoy any activities that can’t be done at home, and he doesn’t like interacting with anyone outside of a chosen few.

Michael is the exact opposite, much to Ray’s growing dismay. He loves going out for drinks, river floats, and swimming, and worst of all, he loves crowds. Popular bars, popular hang outs, popular people, Michael’s always out somewhere, doing something, in the middle of more people than Ray’s willing to associate with in his entire lifetime.

Supposedly, or so the saying goes, opposites are meant to attract.

That’s the biggest load of bullshit Ray’s ever heard.

If it were even remotely true, he wouldn’t be sitting at his brand-spanking-new desk, eating McDonalds by himself while the rest of the Achievement Hunter group goes out for Taco Bell.

It’s not that Ray hates them, far from it. He likes all of them, even Gavin, who has to be one of the most irritating people on earth. But it’s exhausting being constantly surrounded by people, even ones you enjoy the company of. Here by himself, Ray feels like he can finally breathe for the first time all day.

An entire week has slugged by since he arrived, half of it spent unpacking the van once it arrived, and the other half spent working his ass off editing all the videos the guys have shoved upon him in some sort of gross newbie initiation torture. He’s tired, tired and downtrodden in a way he hasn’t really been before.

The weariness is good though, well earned and altogether happy as it’s just a sign that he needs time to return to the schedule of someone who has to actually work for their keep. Ray enjoys every minute of it, even editing the weekly things. The fact that he never actually thought he’d have the chance to even something as mundane as that helps a lot.

The perpetual angst he seems to have worked up lately is completely different. He’s not quite sure what he thought would happen once he got here, what he wanted and anticipated from Michael and from himself, but whatever it was, it sure as hell isn’t what he got.

It’s not that Ray hasn’t tried, hasn’t extended offers for Michael to come over for pizza, or play the latest game, or just hang out. But Michael’s always busy with something else. With some party, a trip to the pool, or Gavin and Lindsay . . . And, okay, that last part’s really weird. Last Ray had heard, Gavin and Lindsay were engaged and living together. He can’t fathom why the fuck Michael still hangs out with them so much, isn’t there some kind of third wheel rule about that sort of thing?

They never complain though, at least not that Ray knows of. Lindsay doesn’t even work in the same room as them, and she’s almost always there anyways, either filming a behind the scenes or pulling up a chair between Gavin and Michael, messing with them and with their stuff until they kick her out for being too distracting.

If Ray didn’t know better, he’d be drawing some pretty odd conclusions right about now. But Michael’s too loud, too much the type to say exactly what he thinks to keep something as ridiculous as a permanent threesome a secret.

No, Michael’s just busy. Or maybe he’s just too busy for Ray.

Hell, he’s only been here a week and they’ve already gone nearly half a day without saying a word to each other. Michael didn’t so much as say hello to Ray until he was asking if he wanted to tag along for lunch with him and the rest of the guys.

Ray chews on his hamburger morosely, stewing his own bitterness and jealousy around in his head. So lost is he in them that he doesn’t hear the door click open, nor the beginnings of whispers until he picks up on his own name being uttered.

“His name’s Ray. First time I’ve seen him with how swamped we’ve been with the new RvB season, but Monty told me about him.”

Ray glances up mid-chew, narrowing his eyes as he spots to guys standing in the half ajar doorway. The first is rather short, near Ray’s own unimpressive height, with straw-colored, ear-length hair. The second is over a head taller than his companion, sporting short, dark hair and a stubbled-beard. They’re staring at Ray like he’s some kind of zoo animal, and he has half a mind to act like one and toss his food at them. He reigns that instinct in though, regarding them in turn with a cold glare.

The first lifts a shy hand in greeting. “Sorry, didn’t mean to disturb you, we just wanted to introduce ourselves.” Ray arches an eyebrow. “I’m Kerry,” the guy continues, “And this is Miles,” he slaps a hand to the other man’s chest, earning a pained huff.

“Ray,” Ray says unnecessarily. They already know who he is, clearly, or they wouldn’t have said his name earlier.

Introducing themselves doesn’t seem to be their prime directive however, as Miles keeps tilting his head from side to side, as though sizing Ray up. What the fuck. “Skinny, but he has potential,” he murmurs to Kerry, and Ray purses his lips, annoyed at being talked about as if he isn’t right there. “Monty’s right, with a little work he’d be great.”

“Helps a lot that he’s not some lanky giant like you,” Kerry adds.

Miles elbows him in the gut, and Ray takes the break in conversation as an opportunity.

“Hey, hello, right here,” he says, snapping his fingers until both men are looking right at him again. “Did you know it’s rude to talk about someone like they’re not there? Cause it is.”

Miles shrugs, “We were just assessing you.”

Ray frowns, “Well ‘assessing’ someone like you would a melon at the store is also not cool.”

Kerry, having regained the use of his lungs and thus his voice, interrupts then. “Monty thinks you’d be a good addition to our Freerunning team.”

“Um, what?”

On a list of things Ray thought he’d never hear offered to him, that’s definitely in the top five. Although that’s partly because he has no clue what the fuck they’re talking about.

“Ya’know, where you run around in public places and do flips off of walls and ledges and stuff,” Kerry makes a few weird motions with his fingers, apparently trying to demonstrate “flips off of walls and ledges and stuff.” Seeing the continued, incomprehensive blankness of Ray’s expression though, he amends, “Parkour. It’s parkour.”

“Oooooohhh! Yeah, nope.” Ray swivels back around in his chair to return to his food. Ha, what a joke. _Him_ , do _parkour_. These guys must be smoking something.

“Why not?” Miles whines, and Ray jerks back as the guy practically flies across the room to lean way too close to his face. “You’d like it, it’s tons of fun. And we really need another member.”

“Then go look for recruits in some other office,” Ray says stiffly.

Apparently playing some sort of Good Cop, Annoying Cop routine, Kerry steps forward as well. “Even if you don’t want to, you should come to the gym tonight with us anyways. Just to see what we do, nothing more. If you hate it, or don’t think it’s for you, we won’t bother you anymore.” He reaches over Miles’s shoulder, snagging a stray scrap of paper from off Ray’s desk and whipping a pen out of his pocket to scribble down an address. “At the very least, we could use a cameraman for the evening. Otherwise we’ll just have a lot of steady shots, and that’s dull. We’ll pay you in drinks afterwards if you come.”

“I don’t drink.”

“Well then,” his eyes land upon Ray’s takeout bag, “What about dinner?”

Now that, Ray realizes, is a little too hard to pass up. He’s barely scraping by on his last unemployment check, and it’s still another week until he gets his first bit Rooster Teeth pay. A dinner that doesn’t consist of grease-soaked burgers and fries is far too tempting to overlook.

“Fine,” he sighs.

OoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoO

As with any job, Rooster Teeth is just as shameless about shafting the new employees with the worst of the work for the first few days. From the second lunch is over until nearly four in the afternoon, Ray barely averts his eyes from his screen. And it isn’t even because he’s still resolutely avoiding Michael, either, he’s seriously just that swamped with editing. Jack’s dropped Fails of the Week on him, and Geoff has dumped Things To Do right on top of that. And not just a single week’s worth, either. Ray has about five weeks of episodes to meticulously clip and mash back together. It’s fucking lovely.

When he finally drags himself away for a pee break, he’s not too concerned with getting back in a timely manner. It’s the tail end of the day anyways, there’s not much else he can get done unless he stays overtime, and he’s still not too sure what the rules are on that. Besides, it’s the night Michael usually films Rage Quit, and he doesn’t particularly have a death wish.

He pauses on his way back down the stairs as he catches sight of someone sitting halfway up them, bouncing one of those gumball-machine rubber balls on the step between his feet. Ray watches it hit the wood over and over, the sound of it covered up by the constant buzz of noise in the office. The stairs probably used to be quieter, he thinks to himself as he edges a bit closer, more secluded and peaceful when someone wanted a breather. But the office is packed now, practically overflowing. Still though, the rhythmic bouncing of the ball is oddly calming all the same, and Ray finds himself sliding down onto the step beside the person as he simultaneously realizes that his companion is Gavin Free.

A guilty flare of bitterness wells in his throat as Gavin glances at him, but Ray smothers it under a smile that for once he actually feels, if only just a little. “Hey dude,” he says, “mind if I crash here too for awhile?”

Gavin smiles in return. “Sure. Geoff and Michael sent me out here to ‘work off my useless energy,’” he nods to the ball that he’s still bouncing against the step. “Should have just told me to sod off, it would have meant the same thing.” To Ray’s surprise he doesn’t seem the least bit upset by this, and instead continues to contentedly spring the ball off the wood, switching hands now and again. “Michael’s too nice for that though.”

“I have literally heard Michael tell you to fuck off multiple times in Let’s Plays,” Ray says, disbelieving.

“Yeah, but he doesn’t mean it,” Gavin hums. “Michael’s half show and all fluff. He likes to tease, and he does get pretty angry sometimes, but he’s never actually mad.” Ray raises an eyebrow, incredulous. “Like with Lindsay,” Gavin continues, “He yells at her a lot too, you know. But he’s not really mad, never. He loves her too much.”

Ray freezes, shock coursing through him.

“He loves me too though, I think.” Gavin grins, the look faltering as Ray’s jaw drops. “Wait, no! Not like that! Just, you know, friends.”

“He could have, though,” Ray says suddenly and without hesitation, knowing instantly that it’s true. He hasn’t seen much of Lindsay since he arrived, and he’s been avoiding Gavin like the plague, but he knows he’s not wrong. From the slight frown on Gavin’s face, he knows it too.

Ray’ guessed it since the second he first heard Michael talk about Lindsay while he was still in New York and Michael was half a country away. It’s always with reverence, his words carefully chosen like he’s sifting through shells on the beach. As for Gavin, Ray surmised as much since the airport, and that undeniable tinge of fondness in Michael’s tone around the other man’s name. Ray can all but follow the threads connecting them, find the places where they tangle up together and map out all the different possibilities and might-bes of their lives. He doesn’t dare to, though, too scared to discover the lack of room left for himself in that web. His eyes fall to the stairs, unable to keep looking at that pained, knowing look on Gavin’s face.

“I love Michael,” Gavin says quietly, and Ray gets the vague feeling he’s somehow being reassured, and doesn’t quite like it. “But not . . . It was never like that. He’s lovely, my lovely boi, and maybe if he’d asked, or if he’d come to the company first, it’d be different. For Lindsay, too, I think.” Ray looks up again, drawn in by the way Gavin’s voice changes just slightly, an air of undeniable affection rising into it. “She loves him too. We talked about it once, me and her, when we moved in together last month. She said much the same.”

Ray isn’t quite sure what’s being conveyed here, the concepts almost too complex to truly grasp. It’s uncomfortable, especially when Gavin meets his eyes as though waiting for a similar confession Ray’s not ready to give. So he not-so-elegantly dodges the unvoiced inquiry by changing the subject.

“How’d you two meet, anyways? You and Lindsay,” he clarifies after a breath, not ready to hear Gavin talk about Michael again just yet.

Gavin laughs, clearly catching on to Ray’s awkward and obvious shift of topic. “Accident, really. Joe the cat escaped outside and we were both sent by separate parties to try and coax him out from under a shipment truck. Geoff sent me, and Burnie sent her, and we ended up on opposite sides of the truck cooing at the cat to come out, which escalated to talking about all the cats we’ve ever owned, to going out for dinner and-”

“Talking about cats?” Ray fills in.

Gavin chuckles, “No, talking about films. Lindsay has a degree in film, among other things, and as you might know I’m quite the fan of the stuff myself.” He makes an odd gesture with his hands that Ray surmises is meant to mime the holding of the Phantom camera. “We just clicked. Cliché, right?”

“A little,” Ray admits. Gavin grins.

“Michael keeps pestering me to propose to her,” he says lightly, though Ray detects a hint of nervousness in the words. “But I’m not like him, you know.”

“What do you mean?”

Gavin purses his lips a little, studying Ray for a moment before he says. “Michael falls in love at the speed a hummingbird flaps his wings. If it were up to him, I’d have proposed to Lindsay within a year of our first date. That’s not to say that I don’t love her, I do. She’s perfect and if I tripped down the stairs and died right now I’d be happy just to have known her. But for me, this kind of thing takes time. Michael . . . He falls in love nearly as soon as he meets people. He told me that the last person he was head over heels for, he realized he was in love with after a month. A month, Ray! That’s ridiculous!”

“Says the guy who nearly hyperventilated himself to death when I told him I loved him,” a voice speaks up from behind them.

Gavin’s affinity for cats apparently extends to his mannerisms too, Ray observes as the man visibly fluffs up in way he didn’t know human beings could do. Craning his head back, Ray catches sight of Lindsay Tuggey herself standing a few stairs above them, hands on her hips and a smirk playing across her features.

“Sausages, how long have you been standing there?” Gavin squeaks out, eyes like saucers.

“Since the part about you talking about how we met.” Gavin stiffens. “Don’t worry, I’m not going to try and jump you for a proposal now that I know Michael’s been boning you for one too.”

“Too?” Gavin asks.

“Oh yeah, pretty sure he sprung that shit on me waaaaaay before he did you. He knows how you tick just as well as I do, he knew you’d never man up. Lucky for you, I’m also not a fan of jumping the gun.” Ray moves to the side a bit as she takes a seat on the step above them, resting her legs on either side of Gavin and settling her chin on his head, arms hanging around his neck. “I have to see how well you can keep a goldfish alive before I can even consider marrying you,” she teases.

“Hey,” Gavin says indignantly, “I keep Egg alive just fine, and she’s a cat!”

“But you named her _Egg_ ,” Lindsay reminds. “ Egg Bodge Breakfast, to be exact. That doesn’t bode well at all for any future kids. Also you said that kids and cats are the same because you can smush their faces. You are not marriage material.”

“How does a fish change any of that?” Gavin mutters.

“Well if you can give the fish a decent name, and keep from both killing it and smushing it, then I’ll think about it. But you better buy me a snazzy ring. And the proposal should be epic, like take me to Sea World and present the ring while kneeling inside the mouth of one of the whales.”

“You’re bloody bonkers.”

“You love me.”

“Better start booking flights to Sea World,” Gavin sighs. “Where is that? Is that even in Texas?”

Ray watches this exchange with amusement, not quite sure what to make of it all. It’s not as if much of any of this is new information, not even the parts about how much the two of them care about Michael. In the week or so he’s been here, Ray has basically seen it all. He’s seen Michael sit far enough forward in his desk chair that Gavin can ungracefully struggle over the back of it to slide in behind him in order to play taps across Michael’s spine at just the right moment when the render crashes his computer. He’s seen that Lindsay finishes her work as soon as she can every morning, how she’s done before lunch so that she can spend the afternoon either in Gavin’s lap or perched on the arm of Michael’s chair, using his shoulder as an armrest. He’s seen Gavin lay like a limp noodle across his own chair, legs thrown over the back, and Michael pull the entire thing over with a foot so Gavin can rest his head on his thighs. He’s seen Michael use the space under Lindsay’s desk as the perfect nap opportunity the day after filming a late night Rage Quit, his back against her legs and one of her hands threading absent mindedly through his hair.

To be honest, he’s insanely envious. Not in the same way he is of their relationship with Michael in general though, but in a way people want things they know they can’t have. The comfort Lindsay, Gavin, and Michael find in each other is something that is entirely out of Ray’s grasp. It involves too much, too much trust, too much contact, too many people. He envies it nonetheless, craves it with every glimpse he catches of it.

In a few rare instances, the idea of being surrounded by people, to have somewhere and someone to go to whenever he wishes for just about any reason at all, is so unbearably tantalizing that it hurts.

So absorbed is he in watching Lindsay and Gavin amiably banter that he doesn’t notice Michael standing at the bottom of the stairs until the ball tumbles from Gavin’s hands and bounces against Michael’s leg to rebound off the floor and roll down the hall. Everyone’s attention is immediately on him, all conversation ceasing.

Michael lifts a hand, “Well don’t stop gossiping on my account. I just came to fetch some nincompoops to see if they wanted any dinner. No voting allowed, we’re going to Taco Bell.”

“Again?” Gavin whines while Lindsay throws her hands in the air with a triumphant whoop.

Michael’s gaze shifts a bit, focusing entirely on Ray, and belatedly Ray realizes the vague invitation was being extended to him, too.

Ray clears his throat awkwardly. “Nah, I’m uh . . .” He falters, unwilling to explain to Michael how Miles and Kerry ended up roping him into going out when he denied Michael the same privilege not so long ago. “I’ve got pizza in the fridge from last night still, no reason to waste money.”

“Cheap ass,” Michael says with a roll of his eyes, “I’ll pay.”

“I’m good,” Ray insists again. “Really.”

The tension that rises between them as Ray trails off is thicker than butter, and Ray watches helplessly as Michael’s smile turns chillier along the edges. “Right, whatever,” he mutters.

“Maybe some other time?” Ray ventures hopefully.

Michael raises an eyebrow, “Well we’re all going for swimmies this weekend.”

Welp, there goes that idea. Ray feels the hairs on the back of his neck rise the second the word “all” leaves Michael’s lips.

“Not a fan of public pools.” Or any pools for that matter. Ray has never liked swimming.

“What about coming to _Game Of Thrones_ night at Burnie’s when the new season starts in a few weeks?”

Ray swallows, picking up at the rising frustration in both Michael’s tone and arm-crossed stance. “Um, I’ve never seen a single episode of that show . . .”

“Geoff and Griffin are having a party at the fort in two months,” Michael suggests dryly.

While that sounds equally as unappealing as ever previous suggestion, Ray’s desperate to ease that disappointed tension from Michael’s face. “Maybe.” Michael frowns. “Or, er, yeah. I can probably do that. Definitely, actually,” he amends finally, relieved when Michael quirks the smallest of smiles.

It’s only after Michael, Lindsay, and Gavin have tripped off to dinner that Ray realizes he’s agreed to go to _a_ _fucking party_.

Oh, God, why.

OoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoO

Ray’s pretty sure he’s met Monty before, once, possibly twice, also possibly at a great distance because Ray’s fairly certain that he and Monty are woven from the same anti-social cloth. However, they guy didn’t leave much of an impression in Ray’s mind if they had run into each other at some con or whatever before, as upon being formally introduced, the only thought in Ray’s mind is, “ _Holy shit, what the fuck_.”

One would think coming into contact with someone who wears unnaturally hued wigs and the strangest, bizarrely attractive ensemble of form fitting fashion would be something to remember, if only as an oddity. Alas though, it apparently wasn’t, and Ray stands in silent shock for a long moment as he takes it all in. Today, Monty’s adorned in a bright purple wig so elegantly set upon his head that Ray mistakes it for his actual hair for awhile. The wig matches the pair of tight purple jeans purposely splashed with blue flecks of paint along the ankles and waist, though the look is a little off putting once Monty discards his thick cotton, button-laden black coat onto a bench to reveal an electric blue tank top underneath. While it’s more fitting to the setting of the gym, it’s far less impressive than the rest of the ensemble. All in all, Monty appears as if he’s hopped right off the screen of one of his own animations.

“Glad you came,” Monty says in that slow, almost sleepy tone of his. He holds out a hand for Ray to shake, lapsing into silence until Ray does so. “So, you wanna give it a go?” Ray lifts a confused eyebrow, and Monty lazily waves a hand around to the vast expanse of the gym they’ve entered in explanation. “It’s one of the best in the country for this sort of thing.”

“I thought I’d just hold the camera . . .” Ray tries nervously, suddenly feeling infinitely more peer pressured in the face of Monty’s unwavering gaze. “Exercise isn’t really my thing.”

Monty rolls his eyes, “It’s not exercise if it’s fun.” Kerry nods enthusiastically behind him. “Come on, at least try . . .” Monty spins on his heels, finger held at the ready as he stops to point at a set up across the room, “That. Try that.”

“Are you on drugs?” Ray blurts out as his eyes land upon what is unmistakably a small, low set, flying trapeze. “I’m not a fucking circus monkey!”

“No, circus monkeys don’t complain as much,” Monty agrees dully, and snatches Ray’s hand into his, already marching off towards the low-set trapeze. “Kerry, do twenty-five vaults over the horse, and then put the pommels on and work on your arm strength. Miles, you’re on wall today, if I see you landing on your heels again, you’re staying late,” he barks as he goes, earning whines from the pair of them.

Ray struggles fruitlessly in Monty’s grip as he’s dragged along, stunned by the guy’s strength despite his average build. “Look, okay, seriously, I’m not cut out for this,” Ray protests as they near the trapeze. “I have no muscle strength at all, I’ll fall and die!”

“There’s a net underneath, and it’s only about twenty feet off the ground-”

“TWENTY?!”

“-If you do okay, we’ll start training you on the lower ones next-”

“Isn’t that backwards?!”

“-It’s good work for your legs and arms, helps you get used to being able to carry your own weight.”

“You know what also carries my weight? Chairs,” Ray snaps. Somehow, he’s ended up at the bottom of the ladder, Monty shoving at his hips to get him started on the ascent towards the waiting trapeze. “Dude, no! Peer pressure!”

“Don’t be a baby,” Monty drawls, and gives Ray a hard smack on the butt that sends him skittering up ten rungs on instinct alone.

Monty follows in quick succession, making it impossible for Ray to retreat without vaulting over the guy’s head onto the gym mats below. It’s tempting, but the very thought makes Ray’s head spin too much to even consider it. He may not be afraid of heights, but he’s not a fucking idiot, either. Forced to the top by Monty’s insistent presence alone, Ray soon finds himself toeing at the edge of the platform, Monty all but breathing down his neck as he guide’s his hands onto the base bar of the waiting trapeze.

Holding onto the lightly padded side bars to stabilize it, Monty instructs, “Sit on it like a swing.” Ray eyes the net below, pondering his chances of survival should he fall or choose to just jump into it as an escape route. Grudgingly, he swings one leg up over the bar, then the other. “Now fall back until you’re hanging by just your knees.”

“If I die, I’m going to haunt you until you lose your marbles. Like all of them, all of the marbles,” Ray hisses as he does as directed, the blood beginning to rush to his head already.

Without warning, Monty pushes the trapeze forward, sending it and Ray out over the net. Ray shrieks, barely catching Monty’s hasty, “be right back,” over the shrill sound of his own voice.

He’s at the top of his arc, hands moving to cover his eyes so he doesn’t have to witness his imminent doom, when he sees Monty scaling the ladder on the other end of the net, the bar of the second trapeze already in his hands when Ray’s starts back towards the platform. Swinging out over the net once more, Ray hears Monty’s command of, “Hands out!” just in time for him to throw his arms back over (or, uh, under?) his head, and Monty to catch him in a firm clasp around the wrists. “And let go with your legs!”

“Fuck you!” Ray screams, utterly terrified at the prospect. He does as directed however, closing his eyes as he slips off the bar and puts his life, quite literally, into Monty’s hands.

And then Monty drops him. Ray doesn’t even have time to react before he plops softly down onto the net, bouncing lightly once, twice on his back before he comes to standstill. He cracks open his eyes to find Monty smiling, a sight Ray can tell is rare even only having known the guy for a few minutes, on the trapeze still swinging above him, upside-down with his arms crossed over his chest. “Wuss,” he smirks.

“Captain of the crazy train,” Ray bites back.

“Conductors control trains, not captains,” Monty corrects. He lets his legs slip from the bar, and after a half-flip, lands on his feet in front of Ray, a performance Ray isn’t very surprised or awed by, after the near-death experience he just went through. “So, what did you think?”

“I think you’re twelve kinds of coo-coo bananas,” Ray mutters. Whether or not he found the rush of it all, the swing and drop and feeling of falling exhilarating, just for a moment, he decides isn’t anyone’s business but his own.

“You’ve got the potential, you know,” Monty says, ignoring Ray’s jibe. “The right build, the right taste for the thrill, the right sense of humor.”

“Eat a dick.”

“I won’t force you,” Monty says, unperturbed. “But I mean, really, what else do you have to do with your spare time?”

It’s a low blow, stabbing at all the soft spots of Ray and leaving a sour taste in Ray’s mouth. He’d deny it, but he’d be lying. He doesn’t have anything to do, no hobbies outside of those that landed him his job, and now no friends with common interests enough to hang out with. It’s a sickening realization, to see the paths stretched out before him, Monty’s gang all too ready to welcome him, and Michael’s unbothered by leaving him to eat in the office alone.

It’s not a thing like he expected.

“Let me think about it,” Ray says softly, more to himself than Monty.

Monty just shrugs, already turning away to hop off the side of the net. “Take your time.”

OoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoO

Ray does take his time, lets the days roll into a week in which he actually does think about it, at least a little bit. For the most part, Monty’s left him alone. Occasionally Kerry and Miles will peek in on him, or message him with one of the company IM accounts, but that’s about it. Although lack of pushiness can be just as intimidating in its own regard, like sharks circling their prey. It all weighs heavy on his mind, a menagerie of decisions spread out before him like tarot cards waiting to be flipped. On one hand, he genuinely likes Miles, Kerry, and Monty, just as much as he likes the rest of the Achievement Hunter crew, actually. But as it is, he doesn’t even spend time with the people in his own six person office, for fuck’s sake, why would he make the effort to spend time with people in another area of the company? For that matter, why would he spend time with anyone who wants to drag him out of his neat little comfort nest and make him exercise. Gross.

Hell, Michael can’t even get him to leave the apartment to do regular, fairly lazy people things.

That’s another issue all its own though, isn’t it. And it’s becoming a sore point too, and not just for Ray. In the past week alone Michael has asked him to do something nearly every day after work, and Ray’s found an excuse to defend himself with every time. In fact, he’s starting to prepare them long before Michael asks.

It’s not that he doesn’t want to hang out with Michael, cause, like, he really wants to hang out with Michael. He just doesn’t want to hang out with Michael and everyone else. There always has to be someone else, whether it’s dinner, swimming, or a movie night at Michael’s apartment, he’s fucking constantly surrounded by people.

Ray’s known for awhile now that Michael is more of a lover of people than he lets on, rage-for-show aside, he likes company more than most people at Rooster Teeth do. He’s let literally every single member of the Internet Box stay with him for extended periods of time, he stays late in the office even after he clocks out just to chill with the rest of the guys (in contrast to Ray skittering out of there at five-o-clock sharp every day), he’s one of the most vocal members of the Let’s Plays, and he constantly sends out invites for Xbox Live parties when he’s at home, whether or not he’s on multiplayer. And Ray admires him for all that, he really does, because it’s being surrounded by people in that way Ray will never be comfortable with that is most likely to light the brightest of smiles on Michael’s face.

Ray only wishes that he enjoyed a little more one-on-one companionship every now and then.

“Had to bring Ray back his lunch because he’s too antisocial to sit with us cool kids,” Michael says into the mic, bringing Ray back to the reality of the Let’s Play they’re currently filming, his laugh muffled as he leans a little too close to the pop filter. Michael hasn’t stopped bemoaning Ray’s newest bought of anti-social-ness since they sat down to record.

“I’ll sit with you when you start wearing pink on Wednesdays like a civilized human being,” Ray says in return. He keeps the bitterness out of his voice, the selfishness that threatens to rise up.

It’s his fault, all of it. He knows this the same way he knows how to hold a controller just right in his hands. If Michael wasn’t trying, it’d be different, things would fall apart more naturally, easily.

It would hurt less.

No, the reality is that they’re clashing, butting heads in unforeseen ways. Michael won’t bend to Ray’s will of the company of few and the comfort of the indoors, and Ray won’t bow to the insecurity of being surrounded by people and places without any hope of escape or solitude.

“I invite him to swimmies, I invite him to parties,” Michael blabbers on to the audience that won’t see this Let’s Play for a few weeks yet. “But he just wants to eat pizza alone in his apartment. Who does that?”

“Babies,” Geoff chimes in accordingly.

Ray scowls, averting his eyes to fix resolutely on his screen. “I’m sorry dust mites are better company than you. Quiet and considerate.”

The team guffaws, and Ray smiles to himself for a heartbeat before it all goes to shit.

He knows he’s fucked up by the way Michael stiffens just slightly, back straightening as he lowers his controller and turns a narrowed eye towards Ray. “Excuse me?”

“Dust mites are better company than you,” Ray says slowly, testing how far he can go before Michael snaps. Honestly, he doesn’t care anymore. He really doesn’t. “They actually spend time with me.”

Michael stands, headphones and controller tossed aside into his now empty chair. Behind him, Gavin murmurs a plaintive, “ _Michael_ . . .” That falls flat.

“Considering how dust mites basically live everywhere, I guess they also clearly make more of an effort than you do to get the fuck outside, too!” Michael snaps.

Ray stares at him, thrown for a moment before he stands as well. He’s never been afraid of Michael, not once, and he’s certainly not going to start now, but there’s still something unsettling about Michael’s raised voice, the uncertainty in Gavin’s wide eyes behind the two of them. Michael’s pissed. He’s one hundred percent, actually, irrevocably angry.

Wasn’t it just a week ago that Gavin had insisted that Michael never actually got mad? It had been a hypothesis of sorts, or perhaps a solid argument. A sort of “If . . . Then,” statement.

Michael doesn’t really get mad at people he loves. If Michael doesn’t get mad at you, then Michael in some way loves you.

Which means that everything sucks a hell of a lot worse than Ray initially thought it did. It’s been going downhill for awhile, of course, ever since Michael had labeled Gavin as his best friend that day at the airport. The rugs just keep getting pulled out from under Ray’s feet, and sooner or later he’s just going to fall right on his ass.

He’s pretty damn close right now.

“You’re mad at me,” Ray says quietly, shocked to the core as he processes the red tinge to Michael’s face, his gritted teeth, the fists balled at his side.

“Fuck yeah I’m mad at you!” Michael spits. “Do you know how fucking excited I was that you got this job?! I was bouncing off the god damn walls, you asshole! And then you got here and did nothing but pull your same old aloof bullshit! It was okay on the west coast because we lived a state apart! But we’re basically next door neighbors now and I still barely see you! It’s not like I’ve been sitting around with my thumbs up my butt, either! I invite you to lunch with us every day! I try and get you to go out for drinks or swimmies or fucking anything between here and the moon and you just go straight home!”

“Michael-”

“Shut up! Do you realize that whenever we hung out back home it was always on your turf? Your city? You shitty apartment? I made the train commute at the butt crack of dawn and the dickhole of night! Every fucking time, Ray! I came to you! I did everything on your terms! So fuck me if I thought maybe you cared enough to do things on mine for once in your fucking useless life!” He spins around, fury rising. Seeking an outlet, Ray watches as Michael grabs the back of his chair and hurls the entire thing against the floor, cracking one of the arm rests clean off with the force of it. The office is dead silent now, all amusement gone from everyone’s eyes.

“Michael, I . . .” Ray falters, a tremble rippling through him as Michael whips back around again, still absolutely seething.

“Did you know Geoff’s been bugging me all week for us to think of a team name? He wanted me to do a Rage Quit with you, even though he’s had to fight you all week to narrate some Things To Do episodes, and you’ve refused every time. He thought I could convince you to come around, to set us up for future projects together. What a fucking joke. You know what our team name should be? _Team Used To Be Better Friends_.”

Ray’s sure the temperature in the room drops the second those words leave Michael’s mouth, and he hears Gavin audibly gasp. There’s nothing but malice in Michael’s tone now, deep and raw, and Ray’s own voice completely fails him.

There’s nothing he can say to that, _nothing_.

Because Michael is right.

Michael kicks his chair back up, shoving it towards his desk and flopping down in it with a growl. “Let’s get this fucking Let’s Play over with,” he says. When no one moves, he turns a glare at the room at large. “I said let’s finish this shit!”

Everyone except Geoff turns their attention back to their screens, Gavin mumbling, “I’m cutting all of that, I guess,” into his mic as a reminder to his future self.

Geoff’s still looking at Ray though, and when Michael fixes his eyes resolutely on his screen he whispers, “Do you wanna go sit this one out, buddy?”

“I-” Ray starts.

“Sit the fuck down,” Michael snaps at him, eyes never leaving the screen.

Ray shakes his head at Geoff, and sits, hands shaking as he picks his controller back up.

Team Used To Be Better Friends, huh.

The rest of the Let’s Play is sullen, and it’ll probably end up as a Let’s Fail instead, but no one says that aloud. When it’s over, Ray waits till the room clears before he pulls out his phone.

_Ray: I’ll do it_

_Monty: Knew you would. Meet us at the gym after work._

OoOoOoOoOoOoO

“You know, I suspected you needed some kind of trigger to push you towards joining us,” Monty drawls, “It’s just too bad it had to blow up like that.”

Ray wobbles where he’s standing on his hands, what little balance he has wavering at the blunt words. Were Monty not holding him up by the ankles, he would have fallen flat on his back. “That’s none of your business,” he grits out between his teeth.

“It is when the entire office can hear it.”

This time when Ray begins to tilt dangerously to the side, Monty lets go, letting Ray thud unceremoniously onto the mat. Ray huffs, faintly winded though not enough so to abate a retort from escaping him. “I said it’s none of your business!” he snaps, a hot flush creeping across his cheeks. Fucking Christ, had the whole office really heard? He knew the Achievement Hunter quarters weren’t exactly soundproof, but Jesus. “It’s not anyone’s business but mine!” he adds when Monty merely raises a thin eyebrow at him.

“And Michael’s,” Monty reminds quietly.

Ray averts his gaze to rub absently at his palms, examining the rawness of them carved from Monty tilting him into handstands for the last hour. Apparently strengthening of the arms was far more important and crucial to beginning parkour than strengthening the legs. Something about needing to be able to catch yourself and hold up your own weight should anything go wrong. That’s how Monty had explained it anyways. Ray runs a thumb over a crease in the skin between thumb and forefinger that seems like it might be beginning to crack. “I don’t really think it’s his anymore, either,” he says dourly, still not looking at Monty. “He made that crystal clear.”

Raising his eyes finally, Ray’s startled to see that Monty isn’t watching over him with any trace of pity in either his face or his stance. He remains entirely neutral, composed as he holds out a hand to help Ray up again, and his verbal response confirms that. “Maybe he did, maybe he didn’t,” he shrugs. “You forget that Michael is just as stubborn and brash as you can be.”

Ray bites his lip, holding back the beginnings of another argument. That’s not true though, is it? Ray might be stubborn, but Michael . . . Michael is more like stone than Ray will ever be. He can be weathered, chipped, and still stand solid and tall. It takes true force to crack him, to cause him to truly break. Lindsay and Gavin had said as much, hadn’t they? And then Ray had gone and pushed too hard, threw his pebble too far into the water, created too many ripples that turned into waves. Maybe it wasn’t as apparent to everyone else, but Ray knew it was true.

He’d well and truly _broken_ Michael Jones.

It’s not the same sort of wound Ray feels within himself, fresh and bleeding and still open. No, it’s more like he wore away at Michael, carefully carved into him over time until it turned into an aching scar that could no longer be ignored.

Michael’s brash temper isn’t anything more than a persona at heart, Ray knows. It’s for show, his rage easily doused in the company of laughter and friends. In reality, Michael’s real anger is like lava, left to boil and build beneath the surface until the outer layers of him become too frayed to contain it any longer. He simmers and steams, keeps it all in until he blows, and it was Ray’s own mistakes that caused him to erupt.

He fucked up.

 _He fucked up_.

And the worst part is, even if he could find a way to fix it all, to go back and do everything over again, he’s not sure he would. What would he do? Go out and party? Show up to swim at Michael’s crowded apartment pool? Pretend that Michael’s declaration of Gavin Free being his best friend didn’t hurt?

Ha. No.

Ray would no doubt make the same choices every time, choose the safety of his shell even at the price of losing Michael. He’s used to loss, isn’t he? Used to being left behind. That’s part of the program. That’s part of his lifestyle. He can’t change who he is anymore than Michael can.

He feels Monty staring at him, drawing him back out of his thoughts as he realizes he’s been standing there, still and silent for far too long. He shakes his head as though to clear the cobwebs from the corners of his mind, making room in which to focus on the task at hand. “Hold me up again,” he says, taking a step back, already bending over to push himself into another handstand, “I’ll get this shit down before the end of the night.”

Monty complies and goes along with the swift change in subject without comment, catching Ray by the ankles once more as he tilts forwards. “Don’t push yourself further than you can go,” he warns in a murmur.

Ray doesn’t respond, his eyes on the mat just inches from his face and his arm muscles trembling from the strain despite Monty holding some of his weight by keeping him vertical.

He’ll push himself as far as he likes, Ray decides, jaw setting into a fierce frown. He’ll push himself the same way he pushed Michael, too far, too hard.

He wonders if, in the end, he’ll end up breaking too.

OoOoOoOoOoOoO

Eventually, everything starts to burn. The first couple of days are full of aches, stiff joints and muscles that were strained further than they’re used to, and Ray knows he must look like a penguin with the rigged, sore way he starts walking. After a week or so, the pain dulls into a slow, steady flame that seems to sear him from the inside out.

“Don’t go too fast,” Monty warns again and again, watching as Ray takes another running leap at the padded gym wall to rebound back to the matted floor, landing too hard on his heels and wincing as he spirals out of control to the ground. “ Don’t push yourself too far too quickly. Only do what you’re capable of.”

Ray barely acknowledges him, a quick nod of his head before he’s shoving himself back to his feet. He locks his sight on the wall again, leaping towards it, hands scrabbling at the top of the pad tied to it for purchase before he fruitlessly falls back onto the matt again, a curse on his lips.

How is he supposed to only do what he’s capable of when he isn’t even sure what that means? He doesn’t know his limits yet, his strengths and weaknesses the way his teammates do.

Kerry is good at vaulting, using his smaller size and build like a bullet in order to clear walls higher than the cushioned horse at the gym. His palms are callused, his arms strong from hoisting his own weight on them alone when he jumps, and his legs sound and all but shock absorbent to support his rougher landings.

Miles, taller and leaner, is a runner. He doesn’t use his arms as much as Kerry, moving them from his sides only when he lands against vertical surfaces for split seconds. Ray’s watched him use his height to his advantage, running over the tops of stone walls and leaping over broad gaps that to Ray seem like canyons and to Miles must be no more than clefts, his long strides carrying him across with ease. His dismounts are more graceful than Kerry’s, easier to rise from because he lands with both feet on the ground without a hand to support him, as Kerry often tends to.

As for Monty, Ray’s sure he’s some sort of robot. The way he incorporates flare and style into his movements makes the rest of them look like clumsy bears in comparison. While there are faint jolts and pauses between Kerry and Miles’s movements, Monty is fluid, rolling through his well-practiced routines as easy as breathing. And unlike the other two, he doesn’t seem to have either strengths or weaknesses, and keeps up with the pair easily, often times even passing them as though their practice is instead competition.

Ray isn’t good at anything yet, not really. He can stand on his hands now, walk a few feet more on his fingers and balls of his palms every day, and he can rebound off the padded walls, but that’s about it. He’s nowhere near ready for “the field” as Monty calls it, and on their one excursion to a park in the light of dusk, Monty made him sit on the sidelines while the others played in leaps and bounds on the equipment, testing the distances they could go, the surfaces against which they could catch themselves before they fell.

And everything burns.

Ray wonders if it’s bad that he thinks that the pain is the best part.

He has a list of reasons why, of course, ways to justify himself if he ever let that slip. It’s not like he’s a masochist or anything, it just provides a distraction. At night, the burn in his muscles all but sings him to sleep, and it’s only a few blinks at best before he’s out cold. There’s no time for laying awake and staring at the ceiling, mulling over past and future mistakes until you drift off hours later. During the day, it’s not so much the burn of the previous day’s routines that twinges in him, but the anticipated fire of the coming ones. Ray mulls his plans for the evening over in his mind while he works, diagramming what he’ll push himself to do that day and what that can lead to in terms of his progress by the end of the week. There are still aches, but by then they’ve dulled too much to focus on. So his attention stays on what’s ahead, how long he can balance on his hands before he tumbles, how many rebounds he can land off the wall before he falters, what Monty will advance him onto that night.

If nothing else, it keeps his mind off Michael.

Michael who’s barely spoken to him in a week, even in Let’s Plays. Team Nice Dynamite is on a roll, their antics laughed at and bantered with by the rest of the team. A few times, Geoff has tried to shove the three of them into what he’s now referring to as Team Lads, but thus far it hasn’t gone over well. Gavin tries, he includes Ray whenever he’s able, letting him in on not-so-secret pacts and calling on him for help nearly as many times as he does Michael. But they’re not a team, not the way they’re supposed to be. Not when Michael’s words to Ray are short, clipped, and only spoken when absolutely necessary.

It’s not even like he’s mad anymore, either, Ray realizes eventually. He hasn’t raised his voice outside of Rage Quit since his previous big blow up. While it’s likely that he’s just stuffing it all back inside again, keeping his cool in front of his coworkers, Ray suspects that in reality, Michael’s just tired of it all. There’s an edge of weariness in his voice during their few exchanges, a tone that threatens to tip Ray right off the edge of some hypothetical, metaphorical cliff. Weariness doesn’t suggest hatred, or anger. No, it implies indifference. And all Ray can think when he hears it is that if Michael at least hated him now, he’d still have some feeling towards him, would still be acknowledging him in some way. Indifference is the total lack of emotion and recognition.

Indifference means Ray isn’t worth anything. Not time, not energy, not Michael.

The day he realizes this, lets it sink into his blood and his bones, he pushes himself to do twice his normal routine at the gym, pushes every fiber of himself until he’s flat on his back on the floor, his chest heaving and his shirt soaked with sweat. He lays there for awhile, eyes closed so that he doesn’t have to look Monty in the eye where the other man stands over him. After a few minutes he gives in, sucks in a shaking breath and folds his arms over his eyes to maintain some semblance of control, to hide what little he can from the rest of the world for just a second longer.

There isn’t a single action on earth that only has one outcome, Ray knows. Each breath of wind creates a wave, each crack in the earth a ripple to the plates, each earthquake followed by an aftershock. It starts with breaking Michael, and Ray fears it will end with breaking himself.

He flinches when he feels Monty sit down beside him, tucks his arms over his face a little tighter, shielding himself under the pretence of exhaustion, of needing a breather. “You know,” Monty says slowly, “I’m going to keep saying it until you learn. Don’t push yourself too far too quickly. You’ll just crash and burn.”

Ray stifles a noise into the curve of his elbow, a sound too close to a gasping sob for him to deny. It’s a little too late for that, isn’t it.

All that’s left is the burn.

And god, if he isn’t going to cling to what little he has.

OoOoOoOoOoOoO

Three weeks and six days into what Miles has subtly been referring to as The Cold War, Ray literally runs smack into Michael in the entry hallway of the building. It’s a bit of a shock, to say the least, to suddenly collide with someone who he’s been more or less avoiding, and who in turn has been more or less avoiding him. It’s even more startling that Michael doesn’t let him fall, and Ray winces as Michael grabs him by the wrist before he stumbles, and pulls him close in order to steady him. They’re practically nose to nose before Ray even fully comprehends what happened.

The first thing he notices is the high, heady blush that’s on Michael’s face, and the fact that he can’t tell if it’s an angry one, or something else. The second thing he notices is that Michael’s hand is still painfully tight on his left wrist. And the third thing he notices is that he’s literally stopped breathing, and promptly sucks in a breath before he starts to turn blue. “Um, thanks?” he says, a little too prepubescent sounding. Freaking great. “You can, uh, you can let go now.” Ray gives his wrist a little shake, biting the inside of his lip in order to keep from flinching as he does so. He desperately hopes Michael can’t feel the ace bandage carefully hidden under his hoodie sleeves.

Michael’s cheeks are returning to their natural color now, and for a heartbeat he just stares at Ray. The release is quick, like Michael suddenly realized he had his fingers wrapped around a cactus, and he’s put two steps between them a second later. “Sorry. I just-” he stops, eyes narrowing as Ray moves is wrist gingerly to his side. “Are you okay?”

Ray stiffens, defenses rising almost against his will. He wants Michael to be concerned, wants him to notice things like this, little things, everything. At the same time though, he doesn’t. Not after all that was said between them. Not after Team Used To Be Better Friends.

“It’s nothing,” he says calmly, each word carefully measured before it leaves his tongue. Whatever Monty says, it’s none of Michael’s business anymore.

Michael frowns, opens his mouth as if to protest, and then snaps it shut again, his eyes hard. “Fine.”

That is apparently that, and Michael’s stormed off into the Achievement Hunter office without another word. It leaves a chill in the hall, sends a shiver down Ray’s spine. As soon as Michael’s out of sight Ray has his wrist in his hand, cradling it against his chest and willing the faint prickle of tears out of his eyes. It’s not his first sprain by far, but Michael has a strong grip, and being bodily pulled up by an already abused set of bones and joints certainly isn’t going to be a fucking party. “Fuck,” he hisses as he rubs at it, a motion which only seems to make it worse.

He’d fallen badly the night before, caught himself too hard and too heavy on just his left hand and twisted his wrist at the wrong angle. It sucked.

“He noticed. That’s good, isn’t it?”

Ray jolts, whirling around to see Lindsay leaning against the outside of the now closed office door. “No,” he bites out, unnecessarily harsh. She doesn’t even blink. “We’re not friends anymore.”

Lindsay arches an eyebrow, “Pretty sure ‘Used To Be Better Friends’ implies that you’re no longer as good of friends as you once were, not that you’re no longer friends period.”

He scowls, but can’t deny that she’s right. Technically, that is what it should mean. But if they were still friends, they wouldn’t be just exchanging the barest of pleasantries. As things stand, they’re barely acquaintances. Then again, what does Ray know? Usually when someone drops him like a hot potato they fuck off into the sunset and he flat out doesn’t hear from then again. Michael is sticking around, albeit because they both work at the same company now, but still. A flare of uncertainty rises within him, and Ray rubs absentmindedly at his wrist as he mulls it over. “I don’t really know what we are,” he mumbles.

Lindsay pushes herself away from the door and comes to stand before him, hands outstretched. Ray mutely offers up his wrist for her, his eyes widening as she slowly begins to unwind the bandage. “What do you want to be?” she asks, curling the elastic fabric around her own wrist briefly while she turns Ray’s swollen one over between her fingers.

“I . . .” Ray clamps his teeth down over his bottom lip as her thumb grazes a particularly sensitive spot. “I don’t know, honestly.”

“Is that just because of what’s happened? Or is that a general statement that applies to Michael regardless of the current spat you guys have going on?” She straightens his hand out, separating his forefinger and thumb, and begins to bind his wrist up again, winding the bandage through that space and then back around. “It holds up better when you do it like this. It’ll heal faster too. Unfortunately, it’ll make it harder to hide though.”

Ray barely hears her, the gears of his mind stuck on her previous questions. They strike too close to home, too close to his heart, and vehement denial leaks onto his tongue like poison before he can stop it. “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” he mutters, furious that someone he barely knows can apparently read him so well.

Lindsay glances at him, studying him for a heartbeat before she smiles knowingly. “Don’t worry, I won’t tell.”

“There’s nothing to tell,” he insists. “Like, literally nothing. No headlines, no gossip, no nothing.”

“Of course.”

Lindsay is officially back on his shit list, Ray decides.

It’s not that he doesn’t know what she’s talking about, hasn’t known practically forever. It’s just . . . He hasn’t said it. He doesn’t want to say it. Fuck, he hasn’t even thought it in the secure confines of his own god damn mind. Nothing good comes from shit like that. All he does it tuck it all away, box up Michael’s sunburst smiles, the few times their hands have accidentally brushed together, every single hour of their outings in New York, and keeps it locked up tight. He’s not scared of any possible criticism for his tastes, no. If anything, Ray is terrified of how much more it will hurt when Michael leaves if he admits such things, even only to himself.

He’s survived being left behind by friends before.

He’s not sure if he’ll be able to weather being left behind by someone who means so much more.

“Just, er, just in case I have no idea what you’re actually talking about, for real, could you clarify?” Ray asks softly. Because maybe he’s wrong, maybe Lindsay’s just playing with him, teasing. And if she isn’t, well . . .

“That you’re in love with Michael,” Lindsay hums.

Yeah, no, that’s actually just as bad as Ray thought it would be. Part of him had hoped that hearing someone else say it would somehow magically make the feeling go away, the way it does when you’re a kid. It’s all fun and games until someone calls you out, then you just realize it’s stupid. But it fucking stings, pierces him in all his soft spots and leaves him painfully breathless.

And this is why everything is falling apart. This is why he’s handling it all so badly, spiraling downwards at a rate that’s alarming even to himself.

Because he loves Michael Jones, loves the shit out of him with every fucking molecule of his being. He’d settled for friends, been more than happy to and laughed along with Michael during all their “bro dates.” He was fine with just friends, he’d been happy. He loved Michael enough that as long he had something, anything, he’d be okay.

Now, he has nothing. Absolutely nothing. Not love, not friendship, not anything.

The tears return unbidden to his eyes, and he jerks his newly bandaged hand away from Lindsay and to his face to hide them. Christ, he’s too old to be crying in front of people, he isn’t five anymore. And this is the second time in a matter of days. Pathetic.

“Ray,” Lindsay whispers, and he shakes his head as he feels her hands touch his shoulders.

“S’nothing. I’m fine.”

It’s not nothing.

He’s not fine.

And Lindsay knows that.

Ray doesn’t resist when she pulls him in, wraps her arms around him and tucks his head into her shoulder. Instinctively, he can’t help but cling to her. His mind screams in protest, reminds him of the dangers of revealing such vulnerability in front of people he’s not familiar with, of how quickly people will bite at his weaknesses, like wolves to the lagging fawn of the herd. Except he doesn’t really care anymore. There’s no point. She knows his greatest flaw already, guessed it like it was the plainest fact in the world. Lindsay knows that he’s in love with Michael, he doesn’t really have anything worse to hide. Crying is just the icing on top of the cake.

“Sorry,” he chokes. “M’stupid. S-sorry.”

She doesn’t reply, and Ray’s grateful for that. Anyone else might have said that he wasn’t stupid, might have gone so far as to ask why he doesn’t just buck up and fix shit, ease up on his tight restrictions on how and who with he spends his free time. That’s what Michael wants, surely that would be the easiest solution. But she doesn’t, she doesn’t speak at all, and if Ray could form any more coherent sentences, he’d thank her for that.

Instead, he just cries, trying his best to soak his own sleeves instead of her shoulder while she holds him.

She doesn’t even tell him that everything will be okay, which is good, because Ray wouldn’t have believed her anyways.

OoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoO

“This is called the trust jump,” Miles says above the wind. He rocks dangerously on his heels where he stands at the edge of a low rooftop beside Ray, his hands in his pockets, the very picture of pure idiocy. “It takes at least three people, and it’s completely necessary for you to advance to free running with us outside of the gym.” Ray gives him a skeptical frown. “Safety first,” Miles scolds in response. An ironic statement, considering how he’s standing. “If you can’t trust us to be able to catch you when you screw up, believe me, you won’t be making any jumps like this ever. Not only will Monty kill you if you try doing it on your own, but you might actually die from doing it. This isn’t some pansy sport we’ve roped you into here.”

Ray glances towards the drop off, disbelieving. It’s ten feet, probably less as the store they’re perched on top of is old as shit and most likely built when people were a heck of a lot shorter. Plus, the roof of the building opposite, their target landing spot, can’t be more than six feet away. Ray not be very tall, but the very idea of not making that jump is ludicrous.

“I will demonstrate,” Miles declares. He gestures grandly towards Kerry, who’s a foot or so back from the side of the goal roof, hands swing loosely at his sides, and then down the ground, where Monty is pacing back and forth between the two buildings. “The idea is to trust your partner,” he points again to Kerry, “to catch you on the other side if you slip. And your . . .” He pauses, casting a guilty look at Monty who tilts his head up, clearly listening, “Other partner,” Miles decides finally, grinning, “To catch you if you don’t make it.”

Ray’s eyes widen as Miles finishes, and he hastily looks between the three of them, abruptly coming to the realization that he might have drastically misread the “friendship” between them. He isn’t going to question it now though, it’s way too late to bring it up, not to mention awkward.

Miles isn’t paying attention to him anymore though, and Ray watches as he backs up until he’s a good three yards from the edge. He bounces on his feet when he stops, eyeballing the gap, and then breaks into a run. Ray barely moves out of the way in time as Miles dashes past and jumps, purposefully taking off too soon. Below, Monty jogs the width of the alleyway, keeping pace with Miles until he lands on the other side. He hits the ledge with only his heels, however, beginning to tip backwards as soon as he touches down. Ray inhales sharply.

And then Kerry reaches out, fingers tangling with the sleeves of Miles’s coat and tugging him forward to safety. It all happens in a matter of seconds from start to finish, and Ray’s left quivering at the edge of the roof when it’s over, anticipation and dread coursing through him simultaneously.

It’s Miles who takes up position on the other rooftop now, arms prematurely outstretched. Ray sniffs, offended that they think don’t expect him to make it. What the fuck has he been training for if he can’t even land a simple jump like this?

Ray skips backwards, curling his hands into fists as he goes. Ten steps, twelve. He eyes the space between buildings for only a second before he charges forward again. His mind flows with everything he’s been taught thus far, how to put is weight on his toes instead of his heels, when to jump with one foot rather than two, how to stretch his body to cross greater distances. This is the last lesson, the last test before Monty will let him go out with the rest of them to do parkour on the streets.

He gets everything right. He leaps when there’s less than a foot between himself in the edge, doesn’t lean too far forward and risk tipping his weight to the ground, and keeps his eyes straight ahead. So he isn’t really sure what goes wrong, whether it’s just simple inexperience or the brief spark of fear that hits him and locks his muscles when he his feet hit the other side and he wobbles.

Adrenaline kicks in before his voice, and he feels the surge of terror skyrocket as steady hands grip him by the arms and haul him up. It makes the yell that escapes him seem belated, because by the time it’s left his lips he’s already clutching the front of Miles’s coat, standing on solid, sound concrete. Faintly, he hears Monty laughing from below, the first time he’s ever heard the dude laugh, actually, and relief washes away the burst of adrenaline as fast as it had come.

“Th-thanks,” he gasps, staring up at Miles’s grinning face.

“Trust jump,” Miles says smugly. “The first time is pants-shitting scary. But it makes everything afterwards seem like cake, because you’ll never be afraid to fall again.”

“As long as we’re with you,” Monty calls up, a hint of warning in his tone. “Miles wasn’t joking when he said it’s deadly for you to go out alone. I will definitely kill you.”

A laugh bubbles up in Ray’s throat, unabated, honest. It feels good, really good. He hasn’t laughed like this in weeks. The adrenaline, the relief, the sharp exhilaration of accomplishing something even as small as this, holy shit, it has to be the best thing he’s ever felt in his life. He wants to go further, climb higher, leap farther until he’s pushed his limits to their breaking point. It’s the sort of feeling that makes one think they can do anything.

Maybe he can.

OoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoO

Ray’s prematurely in his pajamas when someone knocks on his door one evening around seven at night. He sits there for a long moment, staring at the door with the controller still in his hands, his character dying gruesomely on the screen while he’s distracted. Who the fuck? No one ever knocked on his door back in New York, that shit was just unheard of. Hell, he didn’t even know any of his neighbors names. Perhaps someone wanted to borrow sugar or milk or something like in the old TV shows. Shit, did he even have any sugar or milk? When was the last time he went shopping? He has Poptarts. Maybe they’ll accept those as a substitute?

He stands, abandoning his already forfeited game to its own devices in order to warily approach the door. Too late, he forgets that he has a peephole, and stupidly swings it open to confront his unwelcome visitor.

“I don’t have any sugar - oh. Michael.” He blinks owlishly, bemused and horrified to see Michael standing in his doorway.

Michael rakes his gaze down Ray’s frame, eyebrows climbing into his hairline as Ray remembers that his pajamas are actually just a t-shirt and boxers. Holy fuck. “Are you running some kind of rent boy service here?” Michael teases, and Ray flushes, mortified at the connection that’s been made between his denial of having sugar and his lack of pants. _Jesus Christ_.

He shuts that train of thought down before it can get too far, and instead focuses on Michael. More specifically, on the lightness of his tone when he’d spoken. There was no malice in it, like the last month and a half hadn’t happened. What the hell? Suspicious, Ray centers himself in the open doorway, ignoring Michael’s comment in lieu of taking a more defensive stance. He crosses his arms over his chest, “Why are you here?” Panic briefly courses through him as he wonders if Lindsay blabbed. He doesn’t think she would, but at the same time, he doesn’t know how well her vows of secrecy hold out when it comes to Michael, or hell, Gavin, who Ray suspects would have no qualms about spilling such information.

Michael cocks his head, frowning, “Um, the party? I know it’s been rough, lately, but I thought . . .” He draws off, lifting a hand to rub the back of his neck. “You know what, never mind. This was stupid. Sorry.”

He begins to turn away, and Ray nearly lets him go. “Wait!” he calls out, uncurling one arm to reach out towards Michael, falling short as Michael whips back around and stops just short of Ray’s grasp. “I-” Ray fumbles, struck dumb by the expectant look Michael’s now giving him. Shit, he didn’t actually think this through beyond the fact that this is undoubtedly his last chance to make amends. A party. He’s agreeing to a party. At Geoff and Griffon’s Fort, wherever the fuck that is, if he’s remembering correctly. He hates parties, hates the way people get during them, at them, hates the danger that sings through the air with the smell of alcohol.

But . . .

This is his last chance. He knows that, Michael probably does too, otherwise he wouldn’t have shown up.

“Let me just get dressed. And, uh, shower. I can be done in fifteen minutes, can you wait?”

Michael nods, and Ray steps back, holding the door open so Michael can properly come in. He barely waits until Michael’s over the threshold before he closes the door and dashes off towards the bathroom.

One hasty shower later and a quick skip back to his room finds Ray freaking out in front of his closet, cursing his aversion to parties and how it has robbed his wardrobe of anything even remotely impressive. At this point he’s basically become a walking Rooster Teeth billboard with all the free shirts he’s picked up, and as far as pants go he own two sad pairs of jeans and three well worn pairs of shorts. He curses incoherently as he riffles through them, desperate to find something that doesn’t say “Touch my awesome button” or “Blue Team sucks.” Finally, he comes up with a plain black tee, some relic from high school, and a pair of skinny jeans he borrowed from Barbara as a joke during PAX last year. It’s not much, but it’s better than nothing.

He’s just about to throw his last minute ensemble on when a voice chides, “Dude, that shirt looks like it’s about to start reproducing dust bunnies.”

Ray startles and glances over his shoulder towards the open door to his room, starkly aware that he’s even more scantily clad than he was ten minutes ago, now dressed in only his boxers. Michael’s leaning against the frame, hands in his pockets as he looks between the clothes folded over Ray’s arm and Ray himself. “Just wear your usual stuff, it’s fine.”

“But it’s a party,” Ray says, “Shouldn’t I look like less of a complete bum?”

“A party with our coworkers and friends who are already well aware you are a complete bum,” Michael grins. “Plus, I brought you this to show off, fresh off the shirt press.” He tosses something through the air and Ray drops the jeans and tee he’s currently holding in order to catch it. It’s a black shirt, and his eyes widen as he unfurls it to reveal the image of a giant Minecraft cake and text. 

“Going cakeless,” he reads, stunned. “I said that. I said that in a Let’s Play two weeks ago.”

Michael cocks the fingers of both hands into gun signs, pointing them cheekily at Ray with a mocking “Tch!” sound. “Correct! Geoff thought it was catchy, so now you have a shirt with shit you said on it! Congrats, you’re part of the team if idiots who say annoyingly catchy things. Now throw it on and jump into a pair of shorts, we’re already fashionably late.”

Ray stands there for a long moment after Michael leaves the room again, still holding the shirt like it’s made of gold. It can’t really be this simple, can it? Things can’t be falling back into place this easily, without him having to do anything, can they? Although, technically going to a party is doing something, despite him agreeing to it months ago. Maybe that’s all Michael needed, just one outing, one day where Ray didn’t refuse an invitation.

Getting dressed as fast as he can, Ray gives himself a brief look in the mirror to admire his new apparel, and hauls ass out to the living room where Michael is waiting and whistling the Jeopardy theme. “Let’s go, let’s go!” he urges, suddenly excited. If this really is his chance to fix things, he’s going to do everything in his power to make sure it goes well. Wasting this opportunity would be sheer idiocy that even Ray can’t turn down. And if it’s all just his coworkers and their significant others and friends there, he’ll be mostly surrounded by people he knows. Inebriated or not, that should be okay.

 _He_ should be okay.

OoOoOoOoOoOoOoO

So okay, Ray totally thought The Fort was, like, a fucking fort. Like some tiny shed or whatever in the Ramsey’s backyard. It turns out The Fort is some kind of art gallery that Griffon owns. Or maybe it’s a club? The sign is in neon lights, which makes Ray think along the lines of clubs and bars, but the window clings say “NEATO MEDIA” in all capital letters. It also has a lot of super weird statues and shit around it, including a totem pole and the scariest fish Ray has ever seen. He’s sure someone, somewhere out there loves this kind of stuff, and as he’s sure it’s all hand carved by Griffon, she’s quite talented. It’s just not to his tastes, like, at all. Seriously that fish is going to give him nightmares. Getting drunk at a place like this must be a trip all its own.

The inside is just as much of a hodge-podge. There’s multicolored lights flickering all across the walls and the apparent dance floor, and music blaring. A bar has been set up along one wall, an old mosquito lamp dangling above it, which has to be a fire hazard. Between some more odd statues is a DJ equipped with a sound board and the works, and from the way he keeps leaning over to whisper to a friendly looking wooden bear, Ray suspects he’s high out of his god damn mind. A set of stairs in the corner leads up to what looks to be a lofty office space above, though it’s blocked off by strings of glittering fairy lights woven between the railings, although the carving of a massive eagle with glowing eyes at the top of the stairs would have scared Ray off even if the lights weren’t there.

“This is why I don’t need to drink,” he says as Michael leads the way towards the edge of the milling crowds. “This is what being drunk is like. This place, right here. Who needs liquor when you have,” he points to a coiled leviathan snaking its painted body across the far wall, “that. Jesus, is that the one that eats the world? It’s crazy!”

Michael laughs and hooks an arm through one of Ray’s. “I have no idea. I’m not letting you hang out with it though, you’re not allowed to slink along the walls tonight. You have to seriously party.”

Ray digs his heels in instinctively, “I’m not drinking,” he warns.

“Nah, of course not. But you at least have to socialize. Look! There’s Gus! Holy shit, both of you showed up to a fucking party! It’s like the eighth wonder of the world in here!”

Ray allows himself to be dragged along, and admittedly, it’s a little nice. He’s barely had a chance to really talk with any of the company’s founding members since he was hired, though they’re all apparently in the know about him, and both Gus and Burnie fire off questions about how he likes it so far, which Let’s Plays have been his favorite to film, whether or not he’s settled in yet. He’s pleased when Michael hauls him over to Barbara, who he’s spoken to fewer times than he has fingers since he arrived. She’s been so busy preparing for RTX he’s barely seen her, and neither of them have been on Internet Box in weeks to catch up. She’s already hiccupping drunk, and explains to him how good it is to just let go for a night before she needs to immerse herself in work again. Ray reminds her of the impeding hangover she’ll no doubt have, but she just laughs in his face. “Cramps are way worse,” she says darkly, and Ray really didn’t need to know that. Ever.

He spots Monty, Miles, and Kerry through the crowd on the dance floor, and Miles tries to wave him over while trying to dip an equally intoxicated Kerry towards the floor, and ends up dropping him. Ray rolls his eyes and with an approving nod from Monty to move on, decides he doesn’t know them for the duration of the night. A drunk Miles and Kerry seems like a recipe for disaster. Silly disaster, but disaster nonetheless.

Geoff is overseeing what appears to be a game of beer pong between Joel and Jack, his back towards the leviathan on the opposite wall. “She painted that thing there to torture me,” he says to Ray when he refuses to turn around in order to engage in proper conversation. “I’m not looking at it. It’s scary as dicks.”

“If I win, you have to let me sign every t-shirt you own,” Joel slurs, juggling three ping pong balls in his hands. “And if you win,” he bounces one off the table, not even noticing when it goes soaring off into the mull of people rather than landing in a solo cup, “I will reward you by signing every t-shirt you own.”

“Or you can kiss my ass,” Jack says lowly, “And if I win I’ll put that picture of you from last Halloween in a Let’s Play of my choosing.”

The spectators and Geoff take up a rising chorus of “Oooooooh!” that momentarily draws the attention of the people on and surrounding the dance floor. They clearly all know of the aforementioned picture, and Ray makes a mental note to ask a more sober Jack about it later.

He’s standing there for a solid seven minutes, attention fixed on the clumsy spectacle of a game, before he realizes that Michael’s no longer next to him. Ray starts when he notices the vacant spot to his right, and whirls on his toes, craning to see over the mass of bodies and spot that signature stripped beanie. To his dismay, his efforts are utterly fruitless, and a twinge of fear rakes through his lungs, his ribs, the smell of alcohol increasing in his nostrils. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.

A hand curls against his him, and Ray jumps, wide-eyed as he turns to see Michael abruptly beside him once more. “Miss me?” Michael smirks.

“You’re a dick,” Ray hisses above the music. “You know how I feel about shit like this and-”

Michael moves his arm up and over Ray’s shoulders, putting his weight on the other man as he points to Geoff. “Geoff is sober. I told him I’d be right back and that he should keep an eye on you. No biggie.”

Geoff glances at them with a nod, then refocuses on Jack and Joel. He’d have to be sober to keep up with the disaster of a game, Ray thinks, what with the way Joel keeps trying to bounce his shots off the nearby wall and Jack keeps missing by a hundred miles. He’s not sure either of them has a single point.

“Still,” Ray mutters.

“You’re fine,” Michael states. He uses the arm on Ray’s shoulders to steer him, slowly shuffling them towards the dance floor. “Anywho, it’s not a party unless we get a little dancing in, right?”

Ray balks at the idea. “No. Nope. No way. I can’t dance.”

“We’ve played DDR together, stop lying,” Michael chides.

“It’s for girls!” Ray tries, the flashing lights looming ever closer.

“Gender is a social construct,” Michael counters.

“Seriously, Michael,” Ray pleads. He tries to squirm out of Michael’s grip, and is horrified to find Michael practically has him in a headlock now. There’s no escape.

“I don’t care if you do the fucking YMCA out there, Ray, you’re going to dance,” Michael says.

And then it’s too late. There they are, right in the fucking middle of the fucking dance floor. Ray wants to die. If the leviathan mural could eat the world right the hell now it would be doing him a huge favor.

Some weird, dubstep version of “All The Right Moves” is playing, and before Ray can truly begin to contemplate dramatic irony, Michael’s loosens his hold, turns to face him, and takes hold of his hands. And then Ray’s mind is only filled with high pitched, internal screaming.

“What are you doing?” he gasps, barely audible over the music.

Michael laughs, “Dancing. Idiot. Come on.”

“I don’t-”

“Dance with me!”

The look on Michael’s face, the way his eyes are shining with mirth and the too-bright, hopeful smile, combined with that request, are too much for Ray to resist. “I’m going to suck butts at this!” he warns.

Michael shakes his head, chuckling again, and Ray takes the opportunity to tangle their fingers together. Still arm’s width apart, he leads them into a twist towards the floor, purposefully being silly, and he grins as Michael laughs even harder.

It’s the sort of stupid dancing friends do, mock ups of old ballroom moves that don’t match the music in the slightest. Michael twirls him, and Ray twists it out into a clumsy Russian jig, which leaves Michael howling. They move on to the sort of shit you learn as kids, the sprinkler, the shopping car, the lawn mower. Michael shifts to an ill timed Macarena while “Starships” plays around them.

For awhile, Ray forgets that they’re surrounded by people, that there’s half empty cups and shot glasses and bottles of liquor lining the tables and chairs against every wall. He forgets that there are more things in the world than the brush of fingers, the casual, occasional press of bodies, laughter, Michael, and him.

All he knows is that his world is whole again.

The music rolls over to something slower, some old, nineties song that Ray only vaguely remembers, and the crowd groans, snapping him back to reality. He looks around to catch sight of Geoff leading Griffon out onto the floor, effectively silencing any further protests. Slowly, around them, people begin to break up into proper pairs, the grind of bodies turning into a slow spin. “Maybe we should move,” Ray says, not wanting to be in the way.

“Or we could dance?” Michael suggests.

Ray blinks, returning his gaze to Michael, who’s half bowed with one hand outstretched. It’s cheesy as hell, and Michael’s still smiling from ear to ear, making it utterly impossible to tell if this is a joke or not. More than likely it’s all for another laugh, another giggle in the midst of the party, and Ray wouldn’t mind that at all.

A part of him though, the part that makes him raise his hand, completely serious, hopes it’s not.

Michael takes it, and Ray inhales sharply as he’s elegantly spun into the other man’s chest. “Did you take ballroom dancing?” he gasps.

“My mom made me in high school,” Michael grimaces.

“Didn’t you have piercings and dyed hair in high school?” Ray asks.

“I was the fucking highlight of class,” Michael smirks. “And hey, I finally found a good use for it, so who cares.”

Ray flushes, realizing Michael is qualifying dancing with him as a good use for what was probably a torturous set of lessons. He’s unable to dwell on that for long though, as a heartbeat later, Michael has one hand on his back, the other curled around one of Ray’s own, and is beginning some sort of waltz. It doesn’t really match he beat of the music, and both their general tempo and their steps are off, especially since Ray keeps tripping over his own feet. All the same, it’s good. Not their dancing, exactly, but rather the general atmosphere.

Life, Ray decides then and there, isn’t a compound of everything you accomplishes from birth till death, or where you find yourself standing at the end of the line. Were he to die tomorrow, the life that flashes before his eyes won’t be a single, congruent timeline. It will be little things, little moments. He’ll remember only his favorite things and people, and everything in between, every bad second, will be washed away behind it all. He doesn’t need his whole life, he just needs more of this.

He needs the quirked upturn of Michael’s smile, the snickers passed between them when they trod on each other’s toes, the hot press of Michael’s palm to the small of his back, and the ability to move both inside and outside of the boundaries of the song without a second thought.

Their ankles catch against each other when Ray impulsively tries to take the lead, to catch Michael off guard and trigger another, wonderful laugh. Instead, he just sends them crashing closer together, and Michael holds them both up as Ray curses at his mistake. Michael’s face is hardly an inch from his own now, and the situation is strikingly familiar to their hallway encounter a few weeks back. His eyes are unguarded this time, wide and filled with some emotion Ray doesn’t dare give name to, lest he’s mistaken.

For a second, Ray thinks about kissing him. It would be so easy, so simple a process to just lean up and press their lips together. The want pools deep in his stomach, spreading heat to his cheeks and making him feel more daring than he’s ever felt before, more so than he felt on the edge of the roof. This would be nothing in comparison, the gap left between them so small that it can be leapt in a heartbeat.

He’s made up his mind. The way their breath mingles between them, the clench of Michael’s fingers against his spine, the way they’re holding oh-so still like they’re on the edge of some unknown precipice, there couldn’t be a better moment.

Were he a little faster, a little more decisive, Ray might have missed it. Unfortunately, he hesitates too long, or perhaps just long enough. He lingers one second too many, and catches the telltale scent of alcohol on Michael’s breath.

The reaction is instantaneous, and Ray jerks back, stumbles until he’s fallen ass-first onto the floor, sheer terror gripping him like a vice. Michael’s had a drink, probably a few. When? Ray never saw him with a glass in hand, or even a single shot? When did he manage . . .

Ray pushes himself back to his feet, wary to keep a yard or so of distance between himself and Michael. It must have been when he slipped away while Ray was watching the beer pong match. He must have had some shots, god knows how many. Perhaps that’s why he was laughing so much, why his movements on the dance floor had seemed so fluid. He had alcohol in his blood.

Michael’s staring at him, a myriad of hurt, confusion, and subtle anger in his eyes. “Ray, what the fuck . . .” he says slowly, hands reaching out as though trying to calm a wild animal.

And here’s the thing, Ray knows better than anyone how quickly someone you trust can turn into someone who can hurt you when intoxicants are involved. He knows how much harsher the words sound, as though alcohol breaks down all the filters that keep people from saying what they really mean. He knows how words morph into actions faster than someone can blink. He knows how long it takes for bruises to fade, and how to only protect his head because putting his arms anywhere else is risking a fracture or worse.

He knows that faith in a person doesn’t mean they won’t lash out in all the worst ways as long as they have liquor in their veins.

It doesn’t matter that it’s Michael, or that he loves him, or that it all likelihood Michael would never hit him. He’s placed his trust in the wrong people before, and look where he is now, frozen on the dance floor and trying to rapidly put as much distance between him and Michael as he can.

“Ray!” Michael calls after him, concerned, confused . . .

. . . Mad . . .

“I gotta-” Ray almost trips over his own feet in his haste, pushes his way through the crowd, uncontrollable panic hitching in his lungs. “I gotta go! I’m sorry! I have to-”

He bolts for the door, desperate for fresh air. Michael calls after him again, his voice fading beneath the thrum of the music as the DJ switches to another fast-beat song. He struggles with the handle, suddenly sweaty hands unable to grip it until someone reaches over his shoulder and does it for him, brushing his fingers aside and swinging the door wide.

Ray crashes out into the open night, distantly registering the door shutting behind him, pulled closed by someone else. He takes a peek over his shoulder, his eyes locking with Monty’s for a heartbeat before he drops to his knees on the pavement, chest heaving.

“D-did you have anything to drink?” Ray asks between breaths, ready to get to his feet and run again if the answer isn’t in his favor.

“No,” Monty says.

Ray gasps in relief, not even listening as Monty mumbles something about being Miles and Kerry’s designated driver. While he didn’t ask for the company, and isn’t sure he needs it, it’s comforting all the same.

Michael doesn’t follow him, and the entrance to The Fort stays closed with only the muffled sound of music echoing through to the outside. Ray isn’t sure right now if that’s a good or bad thing. He kneels, desperate breaths slowly dissolving to even, light ones. The cool touch of the cement under his palms helps ground him, reassures him that he’s alright. Though it does nothing to soothe the crippling agony of knowing he just blew his one and only chance. Michael probably hates him now. How could he not? Ray had fled like a skittish rabbit, proved once and for all that he couldn’t deal with the world as it existed outside of his handful of safe zones. Hell, it was worse than that. He’d shown Michael that he only had safe zones. There wasn’t such thing as a safe person, at least not as far as Ray was concerned. With the wrong circumstances, anyone who might previously believe themselves to be within Ray’s trust could find themselves inexplicably outside it in a second.

A shuffling sound alerts Ray that Monty is still behind him, apparently waiting while Ray regained control. “I’ll drive you home,” he says when Ray spares him a glance.

There’s a knot in his throat the entire ride back to the apartment complex, and no matter how hard Ray tries, he can’t swallow it down. To his credit, he doesn’t cry, in fact he doesn’t even feel like crying. He thought he’d lost Michael before, and had wept.

This time, he’s sure he’s lost him for good. And in many ways, grief, the sharp, soul-shattering, seep of it is very much like being dead.

The immediate feeling he’s left with is the sensation of unbearable cold.

OoOoOoOoOoOoOoO

Michael doesn’t talk to Ray for the entire next week, going so far as to even skip work twice. When he does show up, he can’t meet Ray’s eyes, and steadfastly keeps his gaze locked on either his work or the floor whenever he mutters something in Ray’s direction during a Let’s Play. At least before they were civil, Ray thinks morosely. He’s not even sure if it counts as hatred anymore. No, no . . . This is worse.

This is indifference.

At least when Michael hated him, he still looked at him, still paid attention to him even when it was in the worst sort of ways. Now he just . . . Sits there, one seat over, and refuses to so much as glance at him. The silence is worse, and extends even into the Let’s Plays. Geoff has been shooting murder glares at them all week, but that hasn’t solved anything. In fact, it’s probably made it worse. Because now Michael tries his hardest not to look at Geoff either.

“I feel like there’s a big part of this story missing,” Monty says after Ray explains it all to him in the car. “I mean, if I have to sit here and listen to you whine, at least you could spill _all_ of the beans.” Ray grimaces. He was not whining, he was totally not whining. “I’m pretty sure I missed some super awkward thing. So what the hell was it?”

“My whole life is super awkward,” Ray reminds.

Monty shakes his head, briefly taking his eyes off the road so that he can shoot Ray a disbelieving frown. “Hey, hey, hey! Driving! You’re supposed to be driving! You can be disappointed later!” Ray gestures out the windshield, and grudgingly, Monty faces forward again.

“Did you kiss him?”

Were Ray not strapped in, he’s pretty sure he would have fallen right out of his seat. Instead, he flails around a bit, and ends up banging his head on the dashboard. “Wha-” he winces, a hand rising to his now bruising forehead. “Fucking what the fuck, dude?! Of course I didn’t!”

Monty raises an eyebrow, thankfully still attentive to his driving this time. “Are you sure?”

“Yes, I’m sure. I think I’d know if I kissed Michael,” Ray snaps.

“Then why is be being such a dick to you? I don’t get it. All you did was flee the party for your own personal reasons. He’s your best friend, right? Or, uh, was . . . But he should understand that.” Monty pauses, pursing his lips, “Did you confess to him or something?”

“No! Besides, how the hell do you even know that I have anything to confess, or that I’d kiss him at all? Who have you been talking to?”

Monty snorts, “I haven’t been gossiping with Lindsay, if that’s what you’re implying. Though I know she knows too, she’s been staring at the two of you, shaking her head, and sighing all week.”

Ray narrows his eyes, “How do you know?”

“Because I’m not stupid?”

“What does that mean?!”

“That you’re obvious as well as oblivious, and I think Geoff knows too, by the way.” Moving his hands down from his forehead to his eyes, Ray actually does whine this time, a high-pitched, hopeless noise of frustration that makes Monty roll his eyes. “Oh, shut up. You’re fine. Besides, we’re here. And I won’t tolerate any of that while we’re out.”

Ray groans as Monty pulls into a parking spot, and leans his head against the passenger side window. “Can I add a bit where I jump off a skyscraper and die into today’s routine? Because that seems like a great idea.”

To his shock, Monty actually leans over and slaps him. “Don’t even joke about that,” he hisses. “Now get out. If want to wuss around in the car, I’ll drive you back to the gym where you can train for another month before I even let you within ten miles of one of our routine areas.”

He’s not joking, not even a little bit, and Ray exit’s the car without meeting Monty’s gaze. In hindsight, it probably wasn’t the best joke to make. During a Let’s Play, sure, prior to a potentially dangerous activity, not so much. “Sorry,” he mumbles as they stride across the lot towards a wide courtyard surrounded by low rise buildings. Monty shrugs, and Ray reads that as an acceptance of his apology, and whistles with relief, skipping ahead a few steps till he spots Miles and Kerry sitting on a low retaining wall.

While Miles merely lifts a hand in a lazy wave, Kerry throws both of his into the air, flapping them overhead with excitement. “Ray’s first day on the town!” He screeches in excitement.

Ray grimaces, “You make me sound like a hooker. At least yell that when I’m wearing my nice boots, I could use a few extra bucks?”

Miles smirks, “Only a few? What the fuck are your prices?”

Gesturing at himself from top to literal bottom, Ray grins, “I’m like a dollar store, dude. Everything is a buck.” Kerry doubles over with laughter while Miles covers his snickers with a fist.

Glowering, Monty mutters, “You all disgust me.”

Miles points at him, “Hey, you love the shit out of us. Well, Kerry and I anyways. Ray’s like the family puppy. You love him, but if he poops on the rug too much, you don’t even feel a little bit guilty about dropping him off at the pound.”

“That’s terrible,” Monty says, “And if you ever do that, I will tell everyone on the internet what a monster you are.”

“My grandma used to do that,” Miles snorts. “Unlike her though, I am an actual human being.” He stands then, throwing his arms behind his back and linking his fingers together to stretch them. “So, are we gonna let the newb patrol have first go, or should Kerry and I show him how it’s done?”

Monty jerks his open hand upwards, and Kerry rises to his feet as well to mimic Miles’ warm ups. After a pause, Ray scrambles to start his too, finding a spot a few feet to Kerry’s right. A couple people have stopped to stare already, bemused by the sight of an oddly dressed man silently directing three other grown men in choreographed stretches. Ray does his best to focus solely on what he’s doing, a faint flush reddening his ears as more people begin to look their way. It’s a little belated for him to suddenly realize that he’s been roped into a very public sport, and in concentrating on the warming up, he nearly misses Monty’s cue for Miles to take the first run.

The courtyard is elliptical, surrounded by low set retaining walls like the ones the group has their back to now. There are six total pathways, one made up of an incline of stairs and a metal railing, that lead into it from the adjacent shopping district, and an empty fountain decorates the middle, it’s stone, ridged center pinnacle rising a good six feet from the ground with a broad plate at its peak. Ray’s toured it before when Monty was explaining the routine he had in mind for each of them, he’d even had a chance to practice a little. But that was always at night, when people weren’t _fucking staring at them_.

Out of the corners of his eyes, Ray watches as Miles stops pulling his leg up at his back and shifts calmly into a neutral stance, arms swimming at his sides. He locks eyes with Monty, who scans the gathering crowd with approval, and then the complete layout of the courtyard, before flicking his hands forward, index fingers pointed out. The word “Go” doesn’t even need to be uttered, and Miles is gone by the time Ray even registers the sign.

Miles leaps sideways, landing lightly on the wall, one hand anchoring him for the briefest of seconds before he’s running. In the time Ray’s spent training with them, he’s never seen Miles move quite as fast as he does now. He slows down during practice in order for Monty to monitor him better, observe his movements and pick out any flaws that could hurt him in a real run. His gait is more fluid now, and he covers the distance of the first wall within a few, long-legged steps. The gaps between the elevated bricks wide enough for three people to walk comfortably side by side, and Ray’s heart skips as Miles doesn’t slow when approaching the first one. He launches over it without missing a beat, touching down on the other side without so much as a stumble, and continues on. He clears four of the six in this manner, easily, elegantly, and Ray gasps as he does a high-arching flip to jump the fifth. The sixth pathway is the one with the stairs and railings, now just a couple yards away from the starting point, and Miles’ methodology in conquering them has obvious skateboarding roots. Someone in the gathered mill of people whoops as Miles skids down one of the metal bars, the soles of his shoes squeaking against it until he drops to the sidewalk. Monty makes a faint, approving sound, and Ray notes that Miles landed toes first. He approaches the dried up fountain next, hops onto the edge, and pounces up towards the stone plate, catching the edge of it with his fingers and using it to swing himself to the other side where he hops right back down again.

All in all the routine takes less than a minute to complete. It’s a seemingly simple circuit of the courtyard, and Ray’s annoyed that their stagnant audience doesn’t seem too impressed. Miles and the others are undeterred however, and Miles jogs the rest of the way back to them, lifting a hand to high-five Kerry in a relay style exchange.

Kerry glances to Monty, who repeats his signal, and skips a few steps backwards, away from the nearest retaining wall. He stalls a ways away, hopping on his toes a moment, then charges forwards. Unlike Miles, he doesn’t run the edge of the perimeter. Instead, he vaults over the wall, his hands touching the bricks on one side for only a millisecond before he clears the flowerbed it contains, not disturbing a single petal. He follows the outer ring until he’s parallel to the second wall, and jumps back in in the same manner. When he reaches the incline of steps he purposefully doesn’t clear the wall completely, and makes his way along the bricks until he’s within jumping distance of the first bar. He leaps, landing upon it with his arms between his legs and his fingers curled round the metal. From there he bounces to the second bar, alighting similarly, and then slides down. The fountain is mounted differently as well, and he lands in the empty basin before running at the centerpiece, rebounding off of it to dismount in almost the same spot Miles had finished.

As he trots back their way, Monty motions for Ray to come stand beside him. “Don’t try and outdo them,” he warns. “This isn’t a competition or a race. Only do what you’ve planned and trained to do, got it?”

Ray nods, flexing his fists at his sides as he waits for the signal. Monty flicks his pointer fingers forward, and Ray paces himself into a run. He’s not as fast as Miles, or as agile as Kerry, not to mention as practiced. He jumps onto the first wall, goes along its length, and leaps over the gap at the end. It’s far from fancy, and definitely a ways from stylish, and he wobbles a little when he lands. At the next jump he turns his body a hundred and eighty degrees to touch down backwards, toes hanging over the edge just a bit because he misjudged the distance.

“Keep going!” he hears Kerry cheer in the second that he pauses with self-doubt, nervous about the minor slip ups he’s already made. “You’re doing great.”

Jogging along the wall backwards, Ray counts his steps, and jumps when he reaches twelve, righting himself to face forward again when he lands on the next wall. He repeats the simple trick again for the next two gaps, and slows as he nears the tricky stairway. Monty had helped him with this bit, extensively in fact, and Ray pictures the inclined balance beams he practiced on as he splits his legs between the two rails. The gap is thinner here than the other pathways, with just enough room for two people to walk together, so while Ray’s legs are short, they still bridge it without too much of an issue. Still standing fairly straight, Ray inhales, exhales, and arches backwards, feet leaving the metal railings as he rolls into a back flip. He dismounts a bit hard, falling on his heels and wincing before he makes his way towards the fountain. Once there, he picks up his pace and catches the curve of the pillar with one hand, lifting his feet off the ground to whirl a quarter way around it and land back at the designated finish. Despite having done less than his team members, he’s still breathing just as hard, his legs shaking and his palms a little raw where they scraped against the stone.

He didn’t do much, but he did do what he was capable of.

“Good job,” Monty praises softly, and Ray can’t help but grin as he drops his hands to his knees to heave in a long, much needed gulp of air.

OoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoO

Despite Ray practically making a career out of being stingy as fuck, he’s mortified when Monty pays for his meal. “Dude,” he hisses when Monty just gives him a blank stare, “I do make money now, you know. I can feed myself.”

“I paid for everyone,” Monty says evenly, hands folded under his chin as he speaks. “Because you all did well with your premade routines and the freestyle you showed off for our onlookers. It’s a reward, a prize. Like at the Olympics.”

  
“Holy shit, I _wish_ the Olympics handed out Denny’s instead of medals. I’d totally sign up!” Miles says around a mouthful of chocolate chip pancakes. He points his fork at Ray, cheeks still stuffed like a hamster. “We do food after most of our runs, today’s just Monty’s turn to pay.”

“Although it’s Monty’s turn to pay every other time we go out, so it’s disproportionate,” Kerry whispers where he’s seated to Ray’s left.

Making a face, Ray mutters, “Ugh, you make it sound like he’s some sort of sugar daddy.”

Miles slaps his palms to his cheeks, turning and batting his eyelashes at Monty. “Sugar daddy, buy me a car.”

“I bought you a bike,” Monty deadpans, “Which you broke when you and Kerry tried to ride it at the same time. Besides, you already have a car.”

“I want a Porsche.”

“They sell plastic ones at Walgreens. You can have one of those.”

Ray lifts an eyebrow, allowing the banter to continue for a moment longer before he speaks up again. “You didn’t protest the sugar daddy bit,” he says slowly, unsure if this is something he should really press. “I mean, I’m sure you’re, uh, not a sugar daddy, but . . .”

To his horror, the three of them lean together, Kerry craning across the table to whisper to the other two. “He wants an explanation. In depth.”

“A diagram,” Miles coos, and makes a triangle with his fingers.

“Urgh,” Ray gurgles, wishing he hadn’t asked.

With a snort, Monty waves a hand at the both of them. “Don’t be gross.” He inclines his head in Ray’s direction, folding his arms across the table. Miles and Kerry copy him, and Ray’s distinctly reminded of the day his parents gave him “The Talk.” Oh god, why did he have to pry.

“When a Kerry, a Miles, and a Monty love each other very much-” Miles begins.

“Shut the fuck up!” Ray yelps, jolting out of his seat. “Don’t even go there! I don’t want to know!”

“You asked though,” Kerry smiles.

“I regret asking,” Ray grimaces.

Monty pats the table top and everyone stills once more. Stubborn, Ray remains standing. “Ray,” Monty says quietly, and Ray stiffens, wary. “Does it bother you?”

“Wha- no!” Ray mutters hastily. “No, not at all. I was just . . . Curious, I guess?” He’s sure he sees Monty sigh in relief, a brief puff of air out through the nose. It’s subtle, but it’s honestly the most genuine show of emotion he’s seen from the usually stone-faced man.

“We all work in the same department,” Monty explains, “and we all tend to stay late, or even overnight, during crunch time. Besides that, we all have similar tastes in hobbies.”

“So much anime,” Kerry gushes.

Monty silences him with another wave of his hand, apparently wanting to get this all over with as quick as possible. Ray wonders if he is perhaps the only one that has dared to inquire about their relationship before, or if Monty’s gone through this spiel previously and is just tired of doing it. “Anyways, things happen, you know. We do all the things normal couples do, just in threes,” he finishes.

Deciding not to point out that he doesn’t really know what normal couples do either, Ray instead says, “You must have a huge-ass bed,” because while he doesn’t want to know, he also has no tact.

“Custom size,” Miles confirms. “But only at Monty’s place. He is the sugar daddy after all.”

“Gross.”

Monty apparently doesn’t seem to mind his new label, and merely turns his gaze towards the window. He stares out it for awhile, ignoring the bickering that’s started up between a persistently lewd Miles, and Ray who has shoved his fingers in his ears. “I didn’t bring an umbrella,” he muses after a minute, and everyone whirls around to look towards the window as well.

“Fuuuuuck,” Ray whines when he catches sight of the rain that’s streaking down the pane, “When did that shit start up?” Just looking at it makes him shiver. It’s the first downpour of the season, and will still be ice-cold with the fading winter. “Good thing Denny’s is open, like, forever. I’ll just live here now.”

To his right, Kerry’s clambering out of his seat, making grabby hands across the table at Miles, who grins and takes them. He whirls Kerry away from the table and towards the door with a wild whoop. Ray watches, flabbergasted, as they stumble outside and into the rain, their clothes becoming streaked with moisture in seconds. Through the window, his eyes track them splash through the already forming puddles and skid over the drenched concrete, heads thrown back with laughter. “They’re insane,” he decides. “Completely insane.”

Monty, who’s gaze has never left the pair since they exited the restaurant, smiles. “There’s nothing wrong with that though, is there.”

Ray blinks as he stands as well, leaving his coat thrown over the back of his chair and stripping that day’s platinum wig off his head. The bell above the door tinkles as he leaves. Unlike the other two, Monty doesn’t race out into the downpour. His steps are measured, easy, and he doesn’t kick up at the puddles as he goes. The way he moves isn’t so much as spectacle as it is an art form, even in this torrent, and it’s completely ruined when Miles and Kerry pounce upon him, knocking him down onto the soaked pavement with screeching laughter that can be heard even where Ray’s still sitting in the dry safety of the Denny’s.

Unexpectedly, he feels the sinking sensation of longing deep in his gut. He’s part of their parkour crew, officially as of today, but somehow, he’s still missing out. Not on whatever happens in that custom sized bed, fuck no, but from where he sits, watching them play in the rain without care, he starts to hate the comfort he’s been left in. He internally berates himself for a moment before he pushes his chair back and gets to his feet, cursing himself for taking so long to come to such simple conclusions. He’s not unwelcome here, with these people, hasn’t been since he was first invited to the gym. Even when he refused, they all understood, gave him the space and room to breathe so he could make his own choices in time. They don’t push him either, not in his training, his routines, or in joining them in other activities. He’s been given the choice of whether or not to push himself, and nothing more.

That alone is like a wash of cold water, even before Ray finds himself stepping out into the rain.

Different people have different methods for conquering problems, and if Ray is a problem, this is the way he needs to be solved. Space, time, the motivation to change himself without feeling like he’s being forced. He recognizes that the reasons he’s so drawn to be around Monty, Miles, and Kerry are the exact opposite of the reasons that he’s been recoiling from Michael, but knowing that doesn’t change much of anything. It just means that he’s aware of where and with whom he doesn’t have to stay on his guard.

God, he wishes that he didn’t have to have to be on guard at all. It’s not fair, to himself or to Michael, that he’s grown up the way he has, scared of shadows and the tang of alcohol on his tongue and in his nose. Shit happens, irreparable, irreprehensible shit, and he’s dealing with it the only way he knows how. It’s not Michael’s fault, and neither is it his own. It’s just . . . Water. And eventually, Ray hopes, his clothes will dry off, the clouds will clear, and the rest of the droplets will roll right off their backs and seep into the soil. He can’t make any promises to Michael, that’s just as out of reach as pushing himself further than he’s capable of going. So he won’t. He won’t promise to go to parties, or the pool, or to lunch. Instead, he’ll use the silence between them as room to move, to breathe, to stretch his limbs until he’s capable of standing solidly on his own, until he can look at the gap between them and not be afraid to leap it. Unlike with Monty though, the space he’s being given now isn’t due to an understanding of his character, so much as a misunderstanding. That’s okay too, Ray thinks as he tilts his head back into the downpour, letting the rain streak down his face. Misunderstandings are easily repaired, and as long as Ray looks at it that way, his goals aren’t as far out of his reach as he previously thought.

He just . . . He just has to tell Michael, is all, explain himself clearly. Ray shudders, not from the cold seeping into his clothes, and bites his lip. That’s not going to be easy, but it’s all he can do now, the last thing he can offer in his own defense. And Michael’s not a snitch, he won’t spread stuff like that around the office. Yet . . .

Further thought on the matter is cut short as Kerry bounds up to his side, pulling at the soaked side of his hoodie and giggling. “What, are you pretending you’re in a music video? Come play, idiot.”

Ray stares at him for a heartbeat, mind still vaguely fixated on what he plans to do tomorrow, to say to Michael that’s never been said to anyone before. “I-” A spray of water hits him from the other side, and Ray sputters, gasping as he whips around to see Miles just feet away, hands still in the air from where he must have thrown collected rain at Ray.

“Quit being dramatic,” Miles says, “And have some fun for once.” He jumps, and Ray stumbles back, crashing into Kerry in an effort to avoid the wave of water Miles attempts to hit them with from the ever-deepening puddles pooling at their feet. Attempting to catch himself, Ray grabs the sleeve of Miles’ coat, and effectively sentences all three of them to falling. They splash down into the puddles in a heap, wide eyes all around until Kerry covers his face to stifle a snicker. It’s all downhill from there, Miles breaking into a wide grin and Ray hiding his own laughter in his elbow.

It’s better that he doesn’t over think it, that he tells Michael what needs to be said naturally, honestly, the same way he intends to keep approaching life in general, without force.

Kerry rises, absolutely dripping, and pulls Ray up with him, Miles close behind. “Well?” he asks, jerking his head to where Monty is kicking at a particularly deep puddle a few yards away.

Shrugging, Ray replies, “Eh, might as well. It’s not like playing in the rain is going to hurt anyone. YOLO and stuff, right?”

OoOoOoOoOoOoOoO

Hands still on his desk, Michael leans back in his chair so he can properly crane his neck to stare Miles in the eye. God damn this dude is tall. Seriously, what does he eat for breakfast? Five dozen eggs? Jesus. “Repeat that, will you?” he asks lowly, “I’m not quite sure I comprehended what you just said as you lead it with ‘Hey, Rage Quit,’ which is neither my name nor a title I’m going to allow you to call me unless you want my shoe up your ass.” Miles barely even blinks at the threat, and Michael grits his teeth. He’s been here too long, none of these chucklefucks are scared of him anymore. Gavin had once described it as poking the bear so often that it turns into an overcompensating Pomeranian, for which Michael had left a piece of wet bread on his chair after lunch. Low blow, but totally worth it. Unfortunately, he’s unaware of Miles has any such weaknesses, and thus can only glower in the face of unwavering indifference.

“I said,” Miles says, slower this time, as though addressing a very small, very stupid child, “Tell Geoff that Ray won’t be in today because he’s sick. He texted me about twenty minutes ago, and told me to pass it on. But as Geoff isn’t in yet, and you’re the only one crazy enough to show up before their own boss, I’m telling you.”

Michael freezes, every word uttered after “sick” falling on deaf ears. “Ray’s sick?!” He’s on his feet immediately, startling Miles into stepping back. Well, maybe he does have some intimidation left in him. “Did you check on him?”

Miles cowers, “Wha- no! He’s an adult! He can deal with his snot and barfing and other bodily nastiness on his own!” He yipps like a tread on dog when Michael snags him by the collar of his shirt. “I’m an adult too!” he defends, “I have work to do! The new season of RvB is staring soon and I have to monitor every recording! I can’t skip out just to look after someone, I don’t have that kind of time!”

“What about Monty, and Kerry?” Michael growls, “I thought you guys were his friends. One of you should at least-”

“Dude!” Miles snaps, “If you’re so worried, you do it!” He slumps as Michael instantly releases him, and staggers back out of reach. “He’s your friend too, isn’t he?”

Michael’s hands drop limply to his sides, clenching and unclenching repeatedly. “I . . . I don’t know what I am anymore. Plus, I have work too, I can’t . . .”

Swiping a hand down the now wrinkled front of his shirt, Miles huffs, “It’s not like you guys can do any Let’s Plays without him though, right? Your entire department’s day is already ruined except for editing. If you give that much of a fuck, ask Geoff to give you the spare key to Ray’s place and go there yourself.” He exit’s the room then, practically stomping out in an overzealous show of being unfazed by Michael’s earlier ferocity. Michael rolls his eyes in Miles’ wake and returns to his seat, arms folding tightly across his chest.

That’s all easier said than done. He and Ray have probably exchanged a grand total of seven words since the party, he can’t just barge into the dude’s apartment after the spectacular fuck ups of that night. Michael sighs and leans forward to thunk his head down against the desk. All the same, not going seems equally as stupid. He’s read way too many horror stories on the internet about colds gone wrong, if something happened to Ray because no one was there to check up on him, Michael would fucking kill himself. Drastic, but true.

He jumps as the door clicks open again, jerking his head up to see Geoff standing in the doorway stuffing an apple fritter into his mouth. “G’morning,” he says, crumbs falling onto the beard he’s trying to grow out. “Did someone steal your coffee? You look like a sad, shaven cat today.”

Michael contemplates that comparison for a second, then shakes his head to clear the image from it. “It’s nothing, I was just, er . . . Do you have a key to Ray’s apartment?”

Geoff lifts a brow, “Why do you need that? Did he lock himself out?”

“He’s sick.”

Geoff purses his lips as he pulls out his chair, giving it a spin before falling into it. “And? I have the key for emergency only reasons, and as far as I can tell, this isn’t a valid emergency.”

Michael sighs, “Look, I . . . I’m worried, okay? When was the last time you were sick and alone? It sucks, I remember from when I first got my own place in Jersey. Kids spend their entire childhoods getting coddled every time they have a runny nose, so when you grow up and have to deal with it yourself, it’s the worst.” He pauses, unnerved by the weird, appraising look that’s settling onto Geoff’s face. “Besides,” Michael adds, “Ray’s an idiot, and probably doesn’t even own a thermometer, let alone any cold medication. He never plans ahead.”

“You’ve been fighting,” Geoff says, and Michael visibly flinches.

“That’s my fault,” he mutters. “I cocked things up at the party, and it’s been awkward since then. That doesn’t mean I don’t give a shit though. He’s still . . .” He falters, keenly aware of how closely Geoff is watching him, “He’s still Ray, you know?”

  
Geoff smiles, “Yeah.” Michael doesn’t realize the key has been tossed his way until it hits him on the forehead. He hisses as it falls to his lap, rubbing at the red mark it leaves behind. “You can go after lunch, I’m sure Ray will be fine until then,” Geoff says, whirling his chair round to face his work station. “Until then, I want to see some serious crunching from you to make up for the hours, got it?”

OoOoOoOoOoOoOoO

Irony is a cruel beast, Ray decides as he drifts to consciousness for the second time that day. Of course if he says something stupid like, “It’s not like playing in the rain is going to hurt anyone,” he’s going to catch a fucking cold. It doesn’t matter that he’s literally never heard of anyone ever actually catching cold from the rain, uttering dumb shit like that is like a curse. Which is why he’s bedridden, stuffed up, aching, and generally pathetic and miserable.

Making sure a child stays warm and dry in bad weather is one of the first things a mother teaches, and as with many words of wisdom from parents, it comes as a warning rather than a real lesson.

In Ray’s opinion, instilling fear into a kid is the worst way to go about teaching them, if only because he never learned anything of value that way.

Kids are taught not to lie repeatedly because eventually, no one will believe them, rather than to not lie at all. They’re told to be nice to others even when others aren’t nice to them, instead of how to stand up for themselves. Children are fed stories that tell them that it’s okay if they’re slow, but witness with their own eyes that it’s the faster people that are praised, that get ahead, in the end regardless. They’re told that it’s the inside that counts, but see images that present the opposite in every bit of media they consume. Kids are taught not to run too fast or climb too high because they’ll get hurt, that they’ll get sick if they play in the rain, but not to do when they fall or become ill.

No one teaches children so much as tells them, weaves fables that lead to false perceptions of reality. And Ray might not be a child, but damn, if he doesn’t still trip into the pitfalls left behind by such failures in teaching.

Love is like that too, he supposes. Kids grow up on fairytales that tell them that no matter what, everything will work out. No one ever tells them what happens when it doesn’t.

Vaguely, Ray wonders if he’s running a fever, as such trains of thought suggest that he is. “Fucking sucks,” he mumbles into his pillow. His mouth feels warm, and his fingers too cold, sensations he remembers from the last time he ran a temperature over a hundred. This really isn’t good, he doesn’t even have any medicine in his bathroom other than a half empty bottle of Ibuprofen he’d toted with him from New York for the occasional gaming headache.

“I’ll just die here,” he bemoans to himself. “Alas, poor, stupid Ray. He dicked around in the rain and succumbed to illness. They say fools can’t catch cold, but irony is a bitch.”

“You caught a cold because you stood out in the rain?”

It takes a minute for Ray to register that the voice isn’t in his head, but in his room, so his shriek of alarm is rather delayed. As is his flailing that tangles him up in his blankets and sends him crashing spectacularly to the floor, where he lays, effectively stunned, until Michael pops into view by leaning over him. “I am hallucinating,” Ray declares stuffily, “Very vividly and accurately, but definitely hallucinating.” Michael rolls his eyes and lifts the key Geoff threw at him, now hooked onto his own carabineer of keys. “Where did you get that?” Ray narrows his eyes. “I didn’t give that to you, did I?”

“Geoff gave it to me so I could make sure you weren’t dying,” Michael says.

Given the half-delirious monologue he’d been attempting to deliver to his pillow a few minutes ago, Ray isn’t in any position to deny that he’s dying. Plus, technically, even the most minor illness can kill someone, and he knows Michael would point that out if he protested. And anyways, he’d be a fucking moron to pass up the chance for Michael to take care of him, even for a second. Selfish as it is, Ray’s sorely missed that. He’s missed Michael’s wake up calls, and Michael being worried about him, and Michael generally giving a fuck about him.

Right now, he’s also missing his friggen mouth filter, because judging by the way Michael’s currently staring at him, like a deer facing imminent death in the headlights, at least part of what he was thinking was spoken aloud. Shitty fucking shit.

“You missed me?” Michael murmurs, “Why? That’s stupid.” Ray is aware that that’s stupid, thank you very much. “I’m the one who . . .” Michael clears his throat and looks away, a faint flush in his cheeks. “Never mind. Here, I picked up a thermometer at the drugstore on my way.” Ray watches blearily as Michael pulls a small, thin box out of a grocery bag he didn’t notice before. “I’ve never used one of these before,” Michael admits, flipping it over in his hands to scan the directions on the back. “I think you have to keep it in your mouth for five minutes or something.” Tearing the box apart, he dumps the thermometer into his palm, turns it on, and before Ray can protest, shoves it into the sick man’s mouth.

Ray gags, but Michael’s grip on the thermometer remains steadfast until Ray grudgingly shifts it under his tongue and claps it between his lips. “Happy now-WAH!” Ray almost chokes on the thing as Michael shifts suddenly, arms coming up underneath him to scoop him off the floor. He’s only held for a second before Michael dumps him unceremoniously onto the bed, shortly followed by his blankets.

“Five minutes,” Michael warns, pointing his finger. “I’ll be back.” He leaves the bag on the floor and strides out of the room. Too stunned to respond, Ray flops back onto the mattress, rolling the thermometer beneath his tongue as he tries to resituate his blankets.

As promised, Michael returns exactly five minutes later (Ray might have counted), a glass of water in one hand and a damp washcloth in the other. He takes a seat on the edge of the bed after briefly fixing the covers a little more, and pops the thermometer out of Ray’s mouth. “101.5,” he reads. “Sheesh.”

Ray stays quiet while Michael withdraws a bottle of cold medicine from the bag, doesn’t comment while he pops the pills Michael hands him and downs them with the offered water, or when Michael makes him change out of his sweat soaked pajamas. It’s only when Michael makes him lie down again and begins to smooth the wet cloth over his forehead that he decides enough is enough. “You don’t have to do this, you know.”

Michael glances at him, and Ray swallows as he catches an unmistakable flash of guilt in those eyes. “I want to,” Michael says steadily.

The way he says it, firm, sure of himself, reminds Ray of the decisions he’d made the night before. He was going to tell Michael today, wasn’t he. Sick or not, he should still follow through on that. Because if he doesn’t, Ray isn’t sure he’ll ever get up the courage to do so again. “At the party-”

“Don’t,” Michael interrupts swiftly, the guilt now flushing across his entire face.

“-I bolted,” Ray continues, “And the least I could do is explain-”

“Ray, _don’t_. You don’t have to, I get it.”

“- that I freaked because of this.” Ray sits up, letting the washcloth slide off his head and plop onto the bedspread. He holds out his arm towards Michael, and lays one finger on a sharp, thin scar an inch above the soft underside of his elbow. “And this.” He pulls up the edge of his t-shirt to reveal a white, circular scar near his navel. “And this.” He twists so Michael can see the scarred, distinctly square imprint to the right of his spine.

Michael reaches out a tentative hand, and Ray feels it tremble as it makes contact with his skin, oddly cold in contrast with his fever. “What is this?” Michael whispers.

Breathe in, breathe out, Ray directs himself, holding fast to his resolve to tell Michael _everything_. “That one specifically,” he mutters, a strain of bitterness in his voice that surprises even himself, “Is a belt buckle.” Michael tenses behind him, his fingers twitching against Ray’s back. Breathe in, breathe out. “Shit happens, you know. Sometimes people you trust can turn on you. Like my dad did when he drank too much.”

Whatever he’d expected to gain from that confession, it wasn’t what he got. To Ray’s dismay, Michael withdraws his hand, and by the time Ray’s faced him again he’s scrambling off the bed in a very literal recoil. No, no, no. This isn’t what he wanted. Michael’s eyes, wide at first, grow hard in an instant, furious as Ray hasn’t seen them since their first, big fight.

“And you thought I’d do something like that, too?!” Michael cries, and Ray gasps at the utter anguish in the outburst. “I would never- Why would you think that?!”

“Because I never thought my dad would do that either,” Ray says. “It doesn’t matter if someone says they love you-” Michael flinches “-Shit happens! It just does!”

“I wouldn’t,” Michael repeats. “I would never. But if you’re that _scared of me_ , fine. You won’t have to deal with me anymore.”

Despite the fever, Ray’s blood runs cold. “Wh-what?”

“I’ll fuck off, okay?!” Michael snaps. “I’ll keep my distance! I won’t talk to you anymore outside of what’s required for us to work together! I won’t fucking touch a single hair on your head!” He clenches his fists at his sides. “I’m sorry I ever-” Something changes in Michael’s eyes, the anger and anguish shifting to a softer, somehow infinitely more painful shade of horror. He lifts his balled hands, gaze fixed on them as he slowly uncurls his fingers. When his lips move again, Ray hears his voice waver. “Fuck,” he whispers. “Fuck, I’m sorry. _I’m sorry_.”

Ray watches him, the motion of his fingers and the dawning revulsion in his eyes. “I’m not scared of you,” he says, the rising desperation in his chest leaking out into his words, high and breathless. “Michael, I’m not scared of _you_. Come here.” Michael deftly shakes his head, taking another step back, another step out of Ray’s reach. “Come here,” Ray says again. Still, Michael doesn’t move towards him, and Ray’s heart ratchets as he takes yet another step in the opposite direction.

And Ray can’t keep waiting for Michael to come to him, can’t keep expecting Michael to be the one to cross the canyon they’ve carved between them every time. That’s not fair of him, fears or not, it just isn’t. So he stands, fumbling his way out of the blankets and onto unsteady legs. Michael, thankfully, stays rooted to the spot as he approaches, and when Ray reaches out to fold his fingers over his clenched hands, he shudders.

“At bars,” Ray says, each word carefully measured, “At pools, at parties, at barbeques, it doesn’t matter where. If there are lots of people grouped together in compact areas, there’s almost always alcohol involved. When I was younger, I thought maybe it was just my dad, but when I worked at his bar, I saw that eventually everyone gets like that. One drink too many, and I’ve seen boyfriends knock their girlfriends down, friends punch each other over the dumbest arguments.” He uncurls Michael’s fists, flattens the other man’s palms beneath his own and pauses to admire the rare contrast of the temperatures of their skin. “I’m not scared of _you_.” He reiterates. “I’m scared of who you could be.” He wonders, as he witnesses the distress fade from Michael’s face, what Michael had thought he meant, whether he thought Ray had been truly afraid of the man behind the Rage Quit persona. Michael may have a sailor’s tongue, and he may get mad over silly things and stupid video games, but he’d never lash out at someone. Not sober, anyways. And Ray doesn’t want to ever find out if he’d do so when he wasn’t.

When Michael moves again, unraveling from his tight, tense stance of unease, Ray only has a second’s warning before he’s suddenly enveloped in the tightest hug of his entire friggen life. It’s not like when Lindsay held him, firmly but gently, as though cradling a child. No, Michael, it seems, has every intent to crush him, and Ray’s breath leaves him in an uneven huff. Regardless, the embrace is somehow infinitely more secure, and though it’s a little hard to breathe, Ray has little intention of breaking it. His fingers curl into the back of Michael’s shirt almost instinctively, holding on as if he’s afraid Michael will let him go if he doesn’t. It’s too warm, especially with the fever he’s still sporting, but he won’t let go, can’t.

“This isn’t a battle of who can squeeze who the hardest,” Michael laughs near Ray’s ear. Despite his tone being lighter, there’s still an audible tremble in his voice, and that only makes Ray cling to him even more. “Jesus . . . Christ.” Michael knocks a knee against one of Ray’s. “Alright, if you intend to make me pass out from lack of oxygen, I don’t want to bang my head on your floor. Back up. Go, go!”

Ray does as ordered, not realizing what Michael intends until the back of his legs bump into the edge of the bed and they’re tumbling over onto the mattress. He gasps, releasing Michael as the other man’s solid weight lands on top of him. Apparently having had the desired reaction, Michael wastes no time in bodily shoving Ray further up, making sure there’s room enough for two, and then rolling over him to lay at his side. Ray stares up at the ceiling for a long second, chest heaving and mind spinning. He opens his mouth with the intention to ask what the ever loving fuck is going on, but doesn’t get the chance, as a moment later, Michael’s rolling him onto his side, and once they’re face to face, the question flounders and dies on his tongue.

Michael lifts a hand, fingers running briefly through Ray’s hair and down to the neck seam of his t-shirt. Ray shivers and locks eyes with Michael. He can’t read the other man’s expression, can’t fathom the meaning of the hard, almost guarded way they stare back at him. Michael’s hand trails down his spine, and Ray jerks as even through the fabric, he finds the scar beneath. Immediately, Michael stops, hand lifting away.

“No, don’t,” Ray shakes his head. “It’s fine.” He can’t help they way his body reacts when Michael replaces his hand, the uncontrollable coil of his muscles and jolt away from the touch. Undeterred, Michael carefully lays his palm against him all the same, waiting until Ray relaxes again. It takes a minute, and Ray closes his eyes as he struggles to even out his suddenly erratic breaths. He’s not afraid, far from it, but that doesn’t mean he’s entirely comfortable with these old wounds, either, or with people touching them. They lie there awhile, and Ray counts the beats of his own heart until they begin to slow again.

“Alright?” Michael asks eventually.

Ray nods, and another jolt courses through him as Michael’s hand moves to the mark on his stomach. He thinks, somewhere beneath the turmoil in his mind, that this must be some sort of test, that Michael is trying to determine either the extent of the damage, or whether or not Ray was lying when he said he wasn’t scared. Whatever it is, it still takes an uncomfortable amount of time for the tautness to begin to ease from Ray’s muscles, seconds blurring into minutes he doesn’t even try to count. Michael is patient though, his other hand moving to knead at a tight spot between Ray’s shoulders. Eventually, he moves again, this time to the one on Ray’s inner arm. His eyes leave Ray’s, and he studies the thin line of it with a frown. “Was this glass?” he asks quietly.

“Yeah, from a bottle thrown at me. No big deal.” Ray shrugs, an unsteady edge to his words as he attempts to laugh. It doesn’t come out quite right, and Michael raises his gaze to him again with furrowed eyebrows.

“It is a big deal,” he says darkly. His hand goes to the scar near Ray’s navel again. This time, Ray doesn’t flinch, even when Michael pushes up the bottom of his shirt without hesitation. “And this one is a cigarette or something, right?”

“Cigar,” Ray corrects.

Michael grits his teeth, eyes clouding, and the hand he’s holding to Ray’s back twists into his shirt hard enough that Ray feels the material straining. “This is why you don’t like to go out.” It’s not a question, and thus Ray doesn’t answer it. “You could have told me . . .”

“I just did.”

“Told me sooner, then. I could have . . .”

“Could have what, Michael? What would you have done? Not invited me to the party? Told the guys to stop drinking during lunch? Rented out the fucking pool so that no drunk dumbasses would be dicking around while I was there? That’s stupid, the entire world can’t conform to or around me, and I don’t want it to.”

“So what am I supposed to do?” Michael asks.

God, there’s so many answers to that, most of them Ray doesn’t dare voice. He wants Michael to forgive him. He wants Michael to stay here, to stop going places Ray can’t and won’t go. He wants things return to the way they were, with the two of them residing entirely and only within Ray’s small zones of comfort. But that’s not fair, he can’t say any of that. Just like he can’t make the world conform to him, he shouldn’t expect Michael to, either. “Nothing,” he says after a pause.

“Ray . . .”

“Seriously, dude, nothing,” Ray insists, all the while aware of his own heart sinking down, down, down. Fuck, this sucks. “I’m not going to ask you to change for me, that’s stupid. Just . . . Maybe, sometimes, come hang here, okay? Play video games with me or whatever, get some Taco Bell, I don’t care. That’s all, okay?”

Judging from the way Michael purses his lips, that’s not the response he’d wanted. All the same, Ray isn’t going to ask for more than that. He’s not greedy, no matter how much part of him wishes he would be, just this once. No, he’ll be fine with this, just this. He’ll live.

“If you’re not going to be selfish for once,” Michael says resolutely, “Then maybe I will be.” Ray has little chance to contemplate what the heck that means, as he’s too distracted by Michael flipping him over like a fucking pancake onto his other side. His surprise lasts only a moment, and then quickly shifts to utter shock as Michael slips one arm under Ray’s head, and throws the other across his stomach. Apparently, Michael’s definition of “selfish” is spooning. Okay. That’s cool.

“Um-” Ray starts, trying to subdue the rising rate of his heart.

“Shut up and go the fuck to sleep, I can feel your fever from here, you sick, soggy, buttmunch.”

Ray stills and closes his eyes. It’s easier said than done, and his mind screams at him to pull away, to keep his defenses up, to tell Michael that the arm his head is now pillowed on is uncomfortable, that the fingers Michael’s slipped under the bottom of his shirt and is skimming over the scar by his naval are too cold, or that the breath against the back of his neck is unnerving. He’d be lying though, and maybe it’s because of the fever, but it’s almost too easy to settle down, to be lulled by Michael’s breath against his skin and the gentle splay of his hand over Ray’s stomach.

Hell, if this is Michael being selfish, Ray wouldn’t mind if he decided to be selfish every day for the rest of their lives.

OoOoOoOoOoOoOoO

Ray knows his fever has broken by the cool layer of sweat on his skin that makes the blankets covering him feel utterly disgusting. He throws them off after a bit of flailing, and it’s only after he sits up that he realizes that not only is it morning, but he’s also entirely alone in his bed. The creeping, uncomfortable thought that he might have dreamed the day before makes him feel a little ill. He rubs at the back of his neck, his stomach, as his eyes scan the room, resting on a sticky note slapped to his phone that’s laying on the bedside table. It’s one of the pink ones from his desk that he often used to label the various leftover fast food in his fridge, except this one isn’t baring a date and restaurant name.

Ray snatches it up as he recognizes Michael’s handwriting, briefly checking that the time on his phone shows that it’s already past noon. Jesus, he must have slept like a fucking rock.

“ _Gone to work. Be good_ ,” he reads aloud. “What the fuck am I, three?” Luckily, it’s not like there’s anyone around to see him carefully stick it to the wall above his bed.

After a quick shower, some dry cereal shoved into his mouth straight from the box, and a diligent check of his temperature with the thermometer Michael left behind, Ray heads to work as well. Even if he still had a fever, he doesn’t think he’d be able to stick around at home for another whole day. His skin feels too tight this afternoon, his nerves too jittery, like every atom in him is electrified and pulling him forward with the unbearable need to see Michael. Perhaps he just needs confirmation that yesterday was not a figment of his imagination, or assurance that Michael can still look him in the eye after being shown Ray’s dirtiest secrets. Whatever it is, Ray makes it to the office in record time, practically sprinting through the door by the end.

He nearly trips over Gavin’s chair, left in front of the door to Achievement Hunter, and upon regaining his balance, Ray’s disappointed to see that the room is completely empty. “Out at lunch?” he wonders to himself. Michael’s backpack is still sitting under his desk though, so that can’t be it.

“He’s been talking to Geoff all day,” a voice says from the door.

Ray whirls, and in doing so slams his foot into one of the wheels of Gavin’s chair. “For fuck’s-” he growls, shoving the thing firmly under the desk and out of the way. Straightening, he catches sight of Lindsay leaning on the doorframe, her phone in hand and her fingers flying across the touch screen.

“That’s what Gavin says, anyways. He keeps trying to eavesdrop, but Geoff locked the door, and that thing is pretty sound proof.”

“All day?” Ray folds his arms over his chest, suddenly nervous again. What could they have been talking about for that long? Surely not . . . “Is it about me?”

Lindsay lifts an eyebrow, “Is it?” she echoes.

Panic flares in Ray’s chest, and he shoves past her, heading towards the meeting room closest to the Achievement Hunter office. It’s shut tight, and through the thing pane of glass in its center, Ray can just barely see Michael and Geoff sitting on the table with their backs to the entrance. Their heads are bent together, clearly deep in the middle of a discussion, but just as Lindsay said, Ray can’t make out a word of what they’re saying. “Shit,” he hisses, and before he can think about it properly, he lifts a fist to knock twice against the wood.

Michael looks up first, eyes widening as he spots Ray through the glass. He says something quickly to Geoff, who nods, and the two of them stride to the door together. Ray steps back as it clicks open, hands balling around the sleeves of the hoodie he’s wearing. There’s no need to ask, Ray knows right away what must have been said in that room when Geoff emerges and lays a hand on Ray’s head, ruffling his hair. It’s a fleeting gesture, and Ray flushes, hot with shame as his vision begins to blur. To his relief, Geoff doesn’t say anything, either about what he and Michael discussed, or about the tears pooling in the corners of Ray’s eyes, and he departs just as soon as he arrives. When Michael steps in front of him, Ray fixes his gaze on the floor.

“You told,” he chokes out.

He tries to jerk away when Michael lays a hand on his shoulder, but the other man’s grip is solid. Frustrated, he swings out with an open palm. To his shock, he makes contact, and the sound of the slap rings out in the hall. Ray freezes.

“Feel better?” Michael asks softly. He reaches up, fingers tangling with Ray’s against his cheek as he pulls the hand away.

Ray jerks his gaze up, eyes wide as he sees the bloom of red across the right side of Michael’s face. “I didn’t mean-”

Michael cuts him off, squeezing his hand before he lets go of it completely. “Yes you did. And I deserved it, so it’s fine. Just this once, though.” He smiles, and Ray feels sick all over again.

“Michael-”

“I’m sorry, I blabbed,” Michael whispers. “I had to, I needed advice. I didn’t tell him it was you I was talking about, but I think he knew anyways.” Of course Geoff knew, Ray thinks bitterly, it’s basically his unofficial job to know stuff like that. “But I know what I need to do now,” Michael continues, “So I think it was worth it. Sorry.”

Ray looks up again, inhaling sharply. “What? What are you talking about? You don’t need to do anything! I told you, there’s nothing-”

“And I told you that I’m going to be selfish!” Michael snaps. He sighs, lifting his hand from Ray’s shoulder to run it over the back of his neck. “Look, just . . . Can you promise me you’ll be good for awhile? No running around in the rain, or doing anything dangerous.” He touches Ray’s wrist, and Ray swears he feels his heart skip. Oh god, he did know about the sprain. Not only that, he remembered. That was weeks ago now. “I don’t want to be worrying about you while I’m away.”

Everything, every little thought and emotion swirling through Ray’s mind screeches to an abrupt halt. “What?” While he’s away? What does that mean? Michael’s leaving? Where is he going? How long will he be gone? Is it . . . Is he leaving because of last night?

“I’ve got some things to do,” Michael says, his words even, determined. “I’ll be gone for awhile, a couple weeks, maybe a month.”

“Why?” Ray’s hands reach out before he really registers what he’s doing, grasping the front of Michael’s shirt, his knuckles bone-white. God damn it, he would have never said _anything_ if he knew this would be the result. He’s driven Michael away, not brought him closer. How could this have happened?

Something must show in his face, because Michael’s expression softens, and Ray gasps as he’s pulled forward, just enough so that their foreheads bump together. Michael’s arms are around his shoulders, keeping him close enough that their breath mingles together but there are still a few scant inches of space between their bodies. “I’m not leaving you,” he murmurs. “Don’t be fucking stupid. I’m just going away for a bit, I’ll come back.”

Ray feels the days melt away. They slide off all the calendars, timelines, like the world’s turning backwards and they’re standing in Ray’s New York apartment as if they never fought at all. It’s different though, closer, warmer, and no matter how hard Ray wracks his brain, he’s sure Michael never held him quite like this before. Even last night somehow wasn’t quite the same as how they were standing now. He’s clear headed now, and everything, every long hidden scar and secret, is out in the open. More telling than that, when Ray meets Michael’s eyes, he’s startled to see that for once, they’re unguarded. There’s something there he still can’t read, the same emotion he glimpsed ever so briefly on the dance floor the night of the party. Whatever it is, it makes his breath still in his lungs.

“When are you leaving?” he asks.

“In a few hours. I’m going home to pack, and Geoff’s booking me the first flight out he can find.” Where ever he’s going, it’s far enough to require a plane, Ray thinks uneasily. What’s so important that he has to be gone for that long? Michael smiles, presumably noticing Ray’s anxiousness. “I’ll tell you all about it when I get back.”

“You mean you’re not telling me where you’re going?” Ray’s struck dumb by the mere idea. What the hell? Is it some sort of weird secret? He thought Michael was leaving because of something to do with what he told him last night? If that’s so, why can’t he explain himself better? “That’s not fair, dude!”

Apparently, Michael has no desire to elaborate, or apologize for that matter. His only response is a murmured warning of, “ _Be good_.”

And then he’s gone. Ray doesn’t follow as he slips away. In fact, he willingly lets go. What else can he do? His eyes track Michael all the way to the office though, follow him as he reemerges and heads to the door to the parking lot and out into the bright Austin afternoon. “Hey!” he calls just as the door starts to close, not knowing if Michael can hear him. “I’m not three years old, okay! I can take care of myself!”

Which is completely untrue, but whatever.

He swears he hears Michael laugh after the door slams shut, however, it’s mostly drowned out by a screech of, “WHO BUNGED UP MY CHAIR?!” from the office, followed by a horrendous crash which can only be the sound of Gavin breaking either his chair or his desk in his effort to dislodge one from the other. Ray sighs and slumps, his feet already shuffling their way towards the disturbance.

A month, huh?

That’s a long time.

OoOoOoOoOoOoOoO

Apparently, Ray missed the part where Michael said he wasn’t going to call, or text, or email, of basically communicate with Ray in any way while he was gone. After a four days, he complains about it to Lindsay, who promptly informs him that Michael Jones has not just been ignoring Ray’s texts and calls and whatnot, but everyone’s. Half the office is freaking out about it, in between Let’s Plays and editing obviously, but with the exception of Geoff, Michael going completely AWOL is starting to concern quite a few people besides Ray.

Gavin, who normally can’t sit still as it is, is practically bouncing off the walls. By the end of the first week, he’s broken his chair, worn a new hole in the corner of his desk, and somehow lost one of the sofa cushions. No one can find it, it’s disappeared into some dimensional vortex somehow. The only times he sits still is when Lindsay physically holds him down by sitting in his lap, her arms draped over his shoulders and the back of his new chair while she faces the opposite direction and chats with Ryan.

As for Lindsay herself, she’s a lot calmer about it than Gavin, at least outwardly. Her only tell is that she moves her work to Michael’s open desk. The lack of an empty seat settles everyone, just a little. “I’m going to find his secret porn stash,” she jokingly tells Ray on the sixth day when he finds her browsing through the unorganized folders all over Michael’s desktop.

“Good luck with that,” Ray laughs.

Jack, ever the mother hen, is caught repeatedly bringing back too many drinks and snacks when he returns from the kitchen. He covers for it by eating double the share himself, but two cans of coke on his desk gives it away to anyone with a pair of eyes. “I’m just really thirsty,” he defends when Geoff raises an eyebrow.

The only thing Ryan does is set Michael’s house on fire in Achievement City during the middle of a Let’s Play. Ray figures that’s his way of expressing his concern, but he actually doesn’t care to look to deeply into it. Because Ryan scares him.

“Maybe he’s like on some sort of secret agent mission,” Kerry gasps when Ray regales the screaming mess Michael’s Minecraft house burning to the ground had wrought. The wool had burned, the dynamite had blown half the city away, etc. “Or maybe he’s a mob boss and he has to go check on his underlings. He is from New Jersey after all.”

Ray rolls his eyes. This is the kind of shit he’s been putting up with since Michael left. He doesn’t know why everyone keeps coming to him with their theories, he has no fucking clue where the guy has gone. Geoff knows, but no one’s asked him, not even Ray. Then again, Ray also hasn’t been able to look Geoff in the eye since the day Michael left. Kerry’s mob boss theory, unfortunately, isn’t the first of it’s kind. “Miles said the same thing,” Ray snorts. “Jesus, you two are like on the same wavelength of stupid.”

Frowning, Kerry mutters, “You don’t know either. It could be true. Anyways,” he perks up, clapping his hands together and swinging his feet, the heels of his shoes scraping the pavement under the bench they’re seated on. Monty’s been sending them out to scout for new places to perform. It’s a ploy to get them out of his hair, Ray recognizes, as Monty’s been swamped with setting up new rigs for RvB all week, and between that and Ray sulking around, he’s starting to get annoyed. An annoyed Monty seems like the potential for a disaster, as Ray’s seen very few actual emotions on the dude. Sticking around after Monty’s shoed them off would probably be like poking a tiger with a stick.

The place they’re at now isn’t bad, but it’s also not particularly spectacular. There’s too many trees, none of them with low or sturdy enough branches to be of any use, and the pavement is old and cracked with bumps in it where roots are starting to break through. Ray’s pretty sure Monty knew all this already, and that they’ve been more or less told to fuck off for the afternoon. At least they weren’t trapped at the office, as Miles’s stricken expression when Monty insisted he stay behind to help had suggested an all-nighter lay ahead for the pair. Kerry, ever boarding the edge between sleepy and sugar-buzzed, probably wasn’t the best helper for such things, and had thus been sent with Ray on the useless scouting mission.

Ray pulls his phone from his pocket, skimming the map Monty sent him. “We should head to the next spot, it looks promising.” He’s lying, it doesn’t, but sitting around is making him restless, making him think about Michael, who by now has been gone for exactly twelve days.

A few weeks, maybe a month, he’d said. That’s a few week or a month more than Ray can take, honestly.

In New York, he’d understood why he couldn’t be near Michael every day. They lived in different states, for fuck’s sake. It had been simple. He’d lived with it because he had to, and because he didn’t know any different. Despite the fighting, the misunderstandings, and the silent treatments that had sprung up between them since Ray’s arrival at Rooster Teeth, he’d at least been able to _see_ Michael, a privilege he hadn’t fully appreciated until it was taken away from him. On top of that, in New York he still heard from Michael multiple times a week, if not daily. There’s nothing now, and that scares Ray more with every passing hour. He’s stopped sending Michael texts that won’t be answered, and leaving messages that won’t be returned. Seeing only his own word bubbles on the screen of his phone and hearing the same recording on Michael’s voicemail isn’t helping anything.

“The next one’s that old abandoned skate park, right?” Kerry asks, shaking Ray from his dangerously wandering thoughts. “That totally sounds like it could be cool.”

“It’s probably beat to shit,” Ray sighs. He stands anyways, motioning for Kerry to follow.

They skate park is only a half mile or so from the area they were in before, so they walk. Were this a few months ago, Ray would have wined about having to, now he welcomes the opportunity. He still doesn’t particularly enjoy the outdoors, but between training and practicing routines with the others, every opportunity to stretch his legs away from Monty’s calculating gaze is like a release. Kerry seems to think likewise, and he skips ahead for awhile, for once uncoordinated and entirely careless with his steps. “It’s good to get out,” he remarks when he catches Ray watching him. “Clear the mind and loosen the muscles.

Ray nods, mostly to the latter statement as the first is pretty far from the truth. Regardless, he has to admit that Kerry has the right idea. He needs to stop thinking so much, especially about Michael.

Lack of communication or not, he trusts Michael. It’s that dumb, unwavering, unfounded sort of trust built on the stupidity of love, but whatever. Ray trusts him, enough said. And if he keeps worrying, he’s going to drive himself up a fucking wall, and not in a cool, parkour way.

A few weeks, maybe a month, and Michael will be back.

Ray’s going to hold him to that.

Giving himself a shake, Ray picks up his pace, jogging to catch up with Kerry and then quickly outstripping him. “So slow,” he remarks coolly, grinning when Kerry scowls. “Bet I can beat you there.”

It’s always a bit of a shock when Kerry puts on an extra burst of speed. He’s only a little shorter than Ray, and for some reason still manages to embody the stereotype of smaller being faster. “Fucking Wally West here,” Ray mutters as Kerry zips past him, flat out sprinting in contrast to Ray’s steady jog. “Christ.”

By the time he reaches the park, Kerry’s already sitting on top of a large concrete pipe, arms raised overhead in triumph. Ray wonders how long he’s been holding that position.

“Call me sempai,” Kerry commands from his throne.

“Eat a dick,” Ray calls him to him. Kerry gasps in mock indignation, and Ray ignores him in order to circle the pipe and check out the rest of the falling-apart skate park.

The half pipe isn’t in bad shape, and it’s curved walls could be used for some interesting moves, but the rest of the place isn’t looking so good. The metal rails are rusted through in many places, the stairs missing huge chunks, and the ramps utterly decimated with big holes in most of them. “What a dump,” Ray whistles.

Kerry slaps his hands against the full pipe he’s still seated on, “Too bad we just can’t take this with us, this would be great if we could move it somewhere else.

Ray leans over to peer inside it, “I don’t know, the detailed sharpie sketch of a vagina halfway through kinda makes me want to leave it here.” He glances up to where Kerry’s sitting, “How’d you get up there, anyways?”

“Skill,” Kerry says, sticking out his tongue.

Challenge fucking accepted.

Ray eyes the side of the pipe, noting that the ridge of it is too far above his head to be manageable were he to try and haul himself up. Moving to the other side, he spots a raised ledge that would provide just enough of a boost if he took a running leap from it. From above, Kerry calls out, “I used the other end!”

“Liar,” Ray accuses as he jumps onto the ledge and takes a few steps back. It’s only a couple of feet to the pipe, so he doesn’t need to jump far, just high.

“Seriously!” Kerry insists, “I just pulled myself up. You know my arm strength is better than yours!”

“Which is why I’m doing it this way,” Ray calls back, “Now shut up and let me concentrate.”

Another step back, two, and then he takes off, hitting the end of the ledge and leaping towards the pipe. His lands hard, arms most of the way onto the top of the structure and his legs dangling in the air as he tries to pull himself up. Too late, he realizes the top is almost as smooth as the sides, and that he has next to nothing to grip. Kerry yells and reaches for him, too far away to make a difference, and Ray slips, nails scraping desperately at the concrete on his way down.

While the distance of a few feet from the pipe was perfect to jump from, Ray regrets not realizing it was also thus the perfect distance to be disastrous should he fall. He doesn’t feel his head crack against it, not really, nor does he hear Kerry scream his name.

No, all he sees is the brief flare of light in his vision, and then everything, sight, sound, feeling, just shorts out like a blown fuse.

OoOoOoOoOoOoOoO

The world is white. White ceiling, white walls, white sheets, white shirt. No, wait, this shirt totally has little blue dots on it. Ray can only see the sleeve of it, and by the uncomfortable stiffness of the fabric, he knows its not something he owns, meaning he isn’t in his apartment. Judging by the layout around him, he’s either dead, or in a hospital. Fan-friggen-tastic. He can’t turn his head far enough to look around himself properly, it doesn’t hurt, but it does make his vision swim worse than it already is. Whatever he’s laying on is super padded, more so than a regular pillow, and it’s only after Ray shifts a bit that he realizes the back of his head has a huge gauze pad strapped to it, cushioning his probably super fucked up skull from further damage. A quick lick of his dry lips elicits a wince from him, and Ray wonders if his jaw is messed up to. At the very least it feels horribly bruised. He must have cracked it on the ledge as well.

One job. He’d literally had one fucking job while Michael was gone, and he’d cocked that up less than two weeks in. Jesus Christ.

Using his peripherals, Ray notes that the room is rather large, not to mention stuffed to the brim with Mylar balloons. Whoever sent those must hate him, or doesn’t know how much those things wig him out. Seriously, they float around forever and scrape along the ceiling at night and scare the shit out of him. At least there’s no flowers, that would just be sad, not to mention confirm his suspicions that he might actually be dead and not just immensely fucked up.

Somehow, on his first scan of the room, Ray misses the occupant in the chair beside the bed. Like, misses entirely. He’s too busy trying to set the balloons on fire with his eyes or something. So when he looks around again and catches sight of him, it’s not really his fault that he literally stops breathing.

Michael is half asleep, a book that looks suspiciously like a volume of _Chicken Soup For The Soul_ , and still sporting a hospital gift shop sticker on its spine, rests in his lap. Ray can tell he’s not actually reading it, he’s flipping the pages too fast with his left hand. His right hand rests on the arm of the chair, and Ray struggles to sit up as he catches sight of the gauze wrapped tightly around it. “What the fuck did you do?” he croaks out.

It isn’t until Michael looks up that Ray sees how utterly wrecked he looks. The dude’s probably almost as much of a mess as Ray himself is, just with less blood. There are dark circles under his eyes, and he’s alarmingly more pale than usual. His hair is a mess, sans hat, and from the state of it Ray thinks he might have been sleeping in that chair not so long ago. The color starts to return to his cheeks when he sees Ray’s awake, and Ray only has a heartbeat to appreciate it before he recognize it as a furious shade of red, rather than a happy one. Shit.

“What the fuck did I do? What the fuck did _you_ do!?” Michael stands, book thrown towards the window that’s streaming in sunlight. Well, if Ray wasn’t dead before, he figures he will be within a minute or two. Michael is shaking, literally shaking as he leans forward and grabs the front of Ray’s hospital gown. “I get a message from a sobbing Kerry saying that he’s called 911, but he doesn’t know if you’re okay because there’s so much blood, and then a call from Geoff telling me you’ve been rushed to the hospital! I was on the other fucking side of the continent, you asshole! It took me hours to get here! And the first plane I could get didn’t have fucking wifi so with no news, I thought you were dead!” To his credit, he doesn’t jostle Ray at all, his grip on him tight, but steady. Ray’s pretty sure he’s tearing a hole in the hospital gown with his nails though. “It wasn’t until I fucking stepped in this god damn room that I knew for sure you weren’t in the morgue, or in a comma or something! Do you get how much you scared the shit out of me, you fucking useless, thoughtless, dickhole?! Kerry was crying! Geoff was barely able to spit out a full fucking sentence without practically hyperventilating! I thought you were dead!” He repeats. Despite the volume of Michael’s voice, Ray doesn’t miss the way it wavers around that last word, cracking along the single syllable as if he’s forcing it out.

When Ray lifts his hands from where they’d been resting on top of the sheets, he notes that his nails are torn to hell. There’s no blood, but from the smell of rubbing alcohol, Ray surmises that it’s just been washed off. It takes some effort to grab onto Michael’s wrist, to pry it from his shirt which now bears a couple of holes. Honestly, he doesn’t know what to say. An apology is no good, as is a reassurance that he’s not dead, because no shit he’s sorry, no shit he isn’t dead. Michael can guess and see that much for himself.

He doesn’t know what to say, because for the first time ever, it looks like Michael’s about to cry. And if the red tinge to his eyes is any indication, he might have already.

“All I could think about,” Michael says slowly, almost too quietly to hear even in the silence of the hospital room, “Is that day I yelled at you in the office, and how I’d never forgive myself if all those days we spent fighting ended up being . . .”

Ray swallows, apology after apology dying in his mouth. Even if he says sorry every day, every second for the rest of his life, he’s not sure it will ever wipe the look on Michael’s face from his mind. Because of that, being a smartass seems like the most profoundly good idea ever. “How do I look?” he asks.

To his delight, Michael’s mouth twists into a wavering smile. “Like an idiot. The right side of your jaw is fucking blue, dude, it looks like you’re going to try out for the next Smurfs movie. And I can’t see the back of your head, but I saw the x-ray. You didn’t break anything, thank god, but you smashed it up pretty good, and you know how head wounds bleed. I think they shaved off some of your hair so they could-”

Weak muscles or not, Ray’s hand slaps up to the back of his head so fast his vision spins. “Fuck!” he gasps, horrified to find that the area around the edges of the bandages is indeed buzzed almost completely to the scalp.

“Griffon says she’ll try to fix it,” Michael laughs, “Or at least make it not look like you have a giant, square bald patch back there.” Ray whines. “You’ll have to send me pictures.”

His fingers stop scraping at the bare spot, falling limply back to his side, and Ray narrows his eyes to the best of his ability. “You’re leaving again.” It comes out accusing, bitter, and he isn’t surprised when Michael looks away. Ray leans forward, grabbing at the right hand Michael’s been so careful to avoid using. “And what’s with this? What are you doing that’s so important you have to get hurt for?”

Michael purses his lips, jerking the hand out of Ray’s reach. “I’m not hurt, it’s just . . . Look, I’ll tell you about it when I’m done, alright? It’ll be pointless if I do it now, and if you hadn’t gone and tried to bash your brains out, you wouldn’t have even needed to see it while it was still healing.”

“Healing implies an injury,” Ray grabs for him again, exasperated when Michael hefts the hand overhead, completely impossible for Ray to get to unless he were to stand. And judging by the state of his still wonked-up head, that’s not a good idea. “I worry about you too, you know!” he snaps. “Let me-”

The fact that that’s enough to get Michael to lower his hand is a shock, and Ray doesn’t waste any time in snatching it, fingers skimming over the edges of the gauze that he now realizes only covers Michael’s palm. There’s a faint outline of blood seeping through, in so peculiar a set of shapes that Ray knows that Michael wasn’t lying. This isn’t an injury. It’s a tattoo. “You were away for two weeks to get a tattoo?” he asks incredulously. “You couldn’t get that in Austin?”

“That’s not all I’ve been doing,” Michael huffs. He smacks Ray’s hands back when Ray attempts to slip his fingers under the gauze and peek. “I already said you can’t see it! You’ll ruin everything!”

Disappointed, Ray sits back again. It’s a mistake, because as soon as his head finds the mound of pillows again, exhaustion threatens to pull his eyelids closed. “You won’t be here when I wake up, will you,” he mutters, his fingers twisting in the sheets. That’s not fair. Michael’s been gone for ages already, and Ray’s only had him back for a couple of minutes. That better be some bitching tattoo.

“No,” Michael confirms. “As it is, this already sets me back more than I’d like. But I’m glad I came.”

Ray inhales as he feels Michael’s fingers curl through his, the gauze lining the other man’s palm scratching against the back of his hand. “You’re a dick,” Ray grumbles despite himself. He lies still for a moment, wondering how long he’ll be stuck in this bed sans Michael, and how many more days a “set back” is going to add to Michael’s time away. “We can’t keep telling the fans that you’re sick, they’ve already been freaking out,” he says tightly. “And if we say ‘Personal leave’ they’ll assume you’re pretty much fucked off into space.”

“I’ll be back,” Michael assures, and Ray knows he says it for him, for his comfort alone.

“I don’t believe you.” Ray looks away, unable to meet Michael’s gaze. He has his suspicions now of where Michael’s been, the telltale admission that Michael had been on the other side of the country enough to make his stomach churn. God, he hopes he’s wrong. At the same time though, he doesn’t dare ask, too scared to find out if he’s right. Because if he is, the chance that Michael might not return becomes all the more likely.

“But do you trust me?” Michael asks. “Hey, look at me.” He tilts Ray’s head back towards him, gently so as not to jostle him too much. “You trust me, right? You said you weren’t scared of me as long as I was sober, meaning that you trust me.”

“Yeah,” Ray agrees.

“So I’m sober now, and I’m telling you that I’ll be back. I’m _promising_ you.”

And that’s kind of a lot coming from Michael. He’s fickle in many ways, his emotions and persona as interchangeable as masks at times. Ray’s seen how quick he is to anger, to fall in love, to laugh, all over the stupidest things. The one solid, sure thing about Michael is that he never breaks his promises. He showed up at Ray’s doorstep to take him to a party he invited him to two months prior for fuck’s sake. And despite Ray’s fears, the growing dread in his gut that Michael’s selfish wishes will lead him to the doorstep Ray hasn’t set foot on in years, he does trust him. “In one piece,” he warns icily. “I’m not flying to New York to go see you in the hospital like this, got it? So you better get your ass back here in one piece.”

Michael’s eyes widen, and Ray wonders if he really thought he was that much of an idiot. He’d had his suspicions the day Michael left, and now they were confirmed. He doesn’t like it, but he isn’t going to stop Michael, either. Michael had called it selfish, though in reality, it’s quite the opposite, and were Ray to tell him that this was a stupid endeavor, that he doesn’t need Michael to take revenge on his behalf, he’d probably only do something even more reckless.

That weird emotion returns to Michael’s face then, and Ray examines it more closely than he’s had the chance to before. It’s firm, assured and well settled wherever it usually hides inside of Michael, but fierce, burning so intense that Ray can feel the heat of it hitting his own cheeks, flushing them. That expression, more than anything, makes him wish he could summon up the courage (and right now, the strength) to just lean up and kiss him. For fuck’s sake, that’s pretty much all he wants to do right now, and every day, really.

He’s tired though, and instead, he lifts his free hand to flick at the IV bag hanging at his bedside. “Tell them to up the dosage in this shit, my head is starting to pound.” Ray flexes his fingers under Michael’s grip, patient as Michael lifts his hand just enough for him to turn his own before they settle together again. “This is super manly by the way,” he says, wiggling his fingers between Michael’s. To his pleasure, Michael’s cheeks redden. Score. “Maybe I should try and knock my brains from my skull more often.”

“I will fucking tear up your entire apartment, your work desk, and everything you love,” Michael warns darkly. “And then I’ll go to that website that drops off elephant shit to people’s houses, and I will order an entire ton of it and dump it on your bed while you sleep.”

“Bark, no bite,” Ray yawns. He can barely keep his eyes open now, though in between long blinks that are rapidly growing longer, he keeps his eyes fixed on Michael. “Don’t go until I’m asleep,” he says, glad when that comes out sounding like a statement rather than a plea.

“I won’t.”

OoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoO

Michael still doesn’t answer texts, doesn’t return calls, and though Ray knows where he is now, that hardly helps. Especially since he spends the next week in the hospital being monitored, and another week after that being forced to stay in his apartment by Geoff and Burnie, who send Lindsay to check on him twice a day like he’s a dog that needs to be let out. Technically, he should be back at work, aside from the bruise on his jaw and the stitches on his head, he’s fine.

Or he is until Griffon finally gets a hold of him the day before he’s supposed to return to work. “I went to a beautician’s school for awhile,” she declares, wielding a pair of scissors in an eerily similar way to how she holds her chainsaw. “Don’t worry, I’ve got this.” Ray worries, especially because he thinks he remembers Geoff once laughing about how his wife had briefly taken an online course in hair styling that had lead to Gavin’s head getting shaved unevenly.

By the end of it his floor looks like someone murdered a sheep. His left ear has a bandage covering a minor nick, and there’s so much hair in his shirt that it’s starting to itch. “Take a picture,” he sighs, handing his phone to Griffon. “I promised Michael I’d send him one.”

The photograph reveals what he fear, and Ray stares at in dismay for a couple minutes. The sides of his head are shaved to the same length as the patch on the back, and all that’s left of his former hairstyle is a long strip in the middle that doesn’t quite go all the way down the back of his neck. Christ, help him. “Looks great,” he tells Griffon with a smile, because Geoff will maim him and throw the body in the river if he says otherwise.

Michael doesn’t respond to the picture, but Ray waits until the “read” notification appears anyways. It’s enough, for now.

There’s not much of a hubbub when he finally returns to the office, other than Lindsay and Gavin showering him with confetti the second he sits down at his desk. Achievement Hunter isn’t big on fussing, though Geoff does take a moment to pat Ray on the head on his way out to lunch, a gesture Ray’s come to recognize as one that more or less is supposed to mean “ _You’re okay_.”

When Kerry comes to find him while Ray’s packing it up for the day, he looks like he’s getting ready to cry all over again. Ray didn’t actually see him cry before, but he doesn’t doubt that he did, especially with the way Kerry’s eyes are watering now. “It’s my fault,” he whimpers when Ray tries to calm him down.

“What? No. You weren’t the one who tried to jump that shit, dude. And you totally called 911, right? You saved my butt!” They’ve had this conversation a couple times now, every time that Kerry visited Ray in both the hospital and at his apartment. He gets the feeling though that until Monty says something, Kerry’s going to be upset about it for awhile.

Luckily, Monty has spectacular timing as usual, and lays a hand on Kerry’s shoulder with a muttered, “Remember when Miles dropped me off the trapeze at the gym at just the right angle that I missed the net and I was concussed for three days? That’s an example of something being someone’s fault. Ray was stupid all on his own, so there’s no one to blame except for himself.”

“Thanks . . .” Ray mutters. The comment lightens Kerry’s mood though, so he can’t really protest.

“Accidents happen,” Monty continues, using his grip on Kerry’s shoulder to lead them out towards the car. “And when they do, we just have to start over.” Ray grimaces, he can guess where this conversation is headed. Just because he deserves it doesn’t mean he has to like it. “Which is why you’re going to help Ray review the fundamentals all week.”

Kerry’s eyes practically sparkle at the opportunity to be in charge, completely ignoring Ray’s groan of protest. “All week?!”

“And next week, Miles will lead you in assisted runs at the outdoor obstacle course,” Monty continues. “The week after that, you and I will be going over the importance of trust exercises and relying on your teammates.”

“Yay . . .” Ray mutters. He stops walking as Monty’s other hand grabs onto the back of his shirt, jerking him to a halt. “Wha-”

“You scared the shit out of us, too, you know,” Monty whispers harshly.

Oh . . .

It’s hard to tell, what with Monty’s generic expression of not giving a fuck, but he should have known that. They’ve been hanging out together for a handful of months now, of course Monty was worried, too. This isn’t just a punishment, Monty’s forcing him to relearn everything because he’s genuinely concerned for Ray’s safety.

Ray isn’t sure how he missed it, but somewhere along the way, his little bubble expanded. Michael’s away, but he hasn’t been left alone. He has Monty, Kerry, and Miles, who he spends the majority of his afternoons with. He has Lindsay and Gavin, who take up his time during work, distract him from editing and make coming in every day something to look forward to. He has Geoff, and Jack, and Ryan, who care about him in subtler ways, little favors and comments and brushes of the hand to his head to reassure him that he’s ended up where he belongs.

He’d been frustrated when Michael had tried to get him to make more friends, hurt by the suggestion that he needed anyone else in his life, and terrified that Michael didn’t care about him anymore. And maybe he’d gained them all in odd fashions, parkour and work and like feelings for certain, auburn-haired idiots. But, to his own surprise, Ray realizes he’s okay with that, with all of it, with everyone. He still doesn’t like going out, or being in places where people get too rowdy and drink too much, and some nights he skips the gym, or work, and just stays home to play video games on his own, needing a break and a breather.

That’s okay, though. No one ever gets mad at him for it, or question him. Instead, Monty just doubles his training for the following day, and Geoff dumps a new achievement guides on his desk.

It turns out that he didn’t need to push himself quite so hard, force himself to stray from his comfort zones too much. He just needed to find people who understood.

That thought gives him a new burst of energy, the sort he hasn’t felt since getting out of the hospital. It lasts him through the gym and all the way home, so that he’s bouncing on his toes while he reads the names and numbers off the mail boxes in the front hall of his apartment building. Ray refrains from running up the stairs after he finds the right one, cautious about tripping and losing the steaming pizza box he has balanced on one arm. Still, his over-enthusiasm shows when he finally knocks on the door he was looking for, and when the occupant answers, her face twists in bemusement.

“It’s Tina, right?” Ray gasps. “We met when I moved in?” Tentatively, Tiny nods. “So, I bought this entire pizza, but I can’t eat it all by myself, and you said you liked video games, right?” He shrugs his back pack off his shoulder and unzips it. “I just got that new _Injustice_ game. I don’t know if you like superheroes though, but um I also brought-”

“I like pizza _and_ superheroes,” Tina interrupts. “As long as there aren’t any onions.”

Ray grins.

OoOoOoOoOoOoOoO

Relearning the fundamentals is easy, as is running the obstacle course. Ray completes his requirements to be allowed back out in the field with flying colors and then some. He just . . . He can’t finish this one fucking thing.

Maybe his head is just too foggy today, too filled with thoughts of the fourty-seven days Michael’s been gone. It’s nearly three weeks longer than he initially said, and even Geoff’s started to show visible unease over it. They’ve told the fans that Michael had an undisclosed family emergency he needed to be away for, and that’s shut them up well enough. It doesn’t do anything to quell Ray’s fears, unfortunately. So that, combined with this challenge ahead of him, he’s having a bit of a hard time.

The trust jump is supposed to be easy, for fuck’s sake.

“You lied to me!” He calls across the gap between roofs to where Miles has been standing, waiting, for the past half hour. “You said that after the first time, I wouldn’t be afraid to fall anymore.”

The look Miles gives him return just about breaks Ray’s freaking heart. There’s distress in Miles’s eyes mirrors the turmoil in Ray’s gut as he stares out over the distance separating them. He isn’t scared Ray can’t make the jump, he’s scared that Ray won’t. And right now, that’s looking to be the case.

Ray turns away from the edge of the roof and jogs back to the other side, swinging his arms to try and shake the nervous tingle from his limbs. This time. This time. Kerry’s standing near him, camera held in hand, and he gives Ray an encouraging nod when Ray glances his way.

He knows he can’t fail, he’s made the leap before. Besides that, Miles is waiting to catch him on the other side, and Monty’s circling around down below in case something goes wrong. This should be so easy.

Toeing at his self imposed starting line, Ray counts his breaths, his heartbeats, slowing down until he doesn’t feel like he’s going to burst from his own skin. “Ready?” he hears Kerry whisper beside him, closely followed by the sharp beep of the record button being hit.

Ray runs. He keeps track of his steps, makes sure he lands each one on his toes first. By now, he’s long been able to judge the number of feet he has left in front of him before the drop off, ten, seven, four, one. And then he skids to a halt, the same way he has the last sixteen fucking times he’s tried this. He stops short, just inches away from the edge, every muscle freezing in place with uncontrollable, inexplicable fear.

“Let’s stop for the day,” he hears Monty say from the ground, and Ray squeezes his eyes shut.

Pathetic. Damn it, this is so pathetic.

OoOoOoOoOoOoO

Michael comes back on a Saturday, but Ray doesn’t know about it till Sunday. He’s fucking furious when Monty texts him at seven in the morning with the news, pissed that he has to hear about it through the grapevine rather than from Michael himself. And when he calls Michael himself, he expresses as much. Or, uh, yells as much. Literally, he just shouts incoherently into the phone for about thirty seconds before Michael sighs as asks, “Feel better now?”

“No,” Ray snaps. “What the fuck, man, I’ve been dying over here and you don’t even call me when your flight lands? Cold.”

“Aw, you’ve been dying to hear from me?” Michael coos.

“I will strangle you with your own intestines,” Ray growls. He means it, too. “When are you coming over? I want to hear about what happened.”

“I was actually thinking that we should go out,” Michael returns. Something shudders with excitement in Ray’s chest. He isn’t going to assume Michael’s implying what it sounds like he is, nope, no he isn’t. “The rooftop of that old sub shop on Fifth?” Oh. Well good thing he didn’t assume.

“Monty told you,” he mutters. Note to self, also strangle Monty with his own intestines. He needs to start a proper list. “Look, it’s not a big deal, okay? I’ll get over it sooner or later.”

“Or today!” Michael suggests brightly. “I’ll be there at noon. See you soon!”

Ray wonders if it’s okay to put Michael’s name on that list twice.

He shows up on time, dressed in his usual attire of shorts and an oversized hoodie. Monty, Miles, and Kerry are all sitting at one of the window booths inside the restaurant, and they wave cheerily to him when Ray glares at them through the pane. Eventually, bored of teasing him, the three of them emerge, Monty in the lead, and Ray refrains from following through with his intestine strangling plans. Barely.

“Is this like some sort of graduation thing?” Ray asks, “Or are you kicking me out?”

Monty rolls his eyes, “Neither. When Michael heard that you were having trouble, he agreed to help, that’s all. You’re a part of this group as long as you want to be, whether you make the jump today or not.”

For some reason, Ray hadn’t expected that. He’d be useless if he couldn’t freerun properly with the rest of them, wouldn’t he? This was the same sort of situation that had left him high and dry so many times in high school, at old jobs. He was only needed so long as he was interesting, necessary, useful. “As long as I want?” he echoes.

“Of course,” Monty says.

It’s as simple as that, really, and while it does little to cure Ray’s fear of the jump itself, it does quell his nerves about everything that might come after. And while Monty doesn’t do anything out of character, doesn’t hug him, or tell him it will all be fine, the small smile he graces Ray with works just as well.

Miles, however, does hug him, Kerry too, and Ray shoves them off with sputters of, “Jesus, I feel like I’m being shipped off to war! Let go, you gross nerds.” Without further ado, he heads towards the metal ladder on the far side of the building, sticking his tongue out at the three of them before he turns the corner, “I’ll do it for sure this time!” he yells.

“Don’t push yourself,” Monty returns calmly.

The climb up the sixteen metal rungs of the ladder to the top of the roof only serves to prove that it isn’t the height Ray is scared of, and he does it with assurance and ease. Similarly, he isn’t afraid to circle the perimeter of the roof either, and does so with a skip in his step twice over before a voice calls to him from the opposite roof.

“You gonna nance around over there all day? Or do you wanna see this sweet tattoo?”

He’d expected this, had basically been waiting for it since he showed up at the shop. All the same, it makes his heart stop. God, he hasn’t heard Michael’s voice in over a month. It takes him a minute to turn around, to face Michael and make sure he kept to his word and returned in one piece. He isn’t disappointed.

Michael stands on the other side of the gap, hands in his pockets and sporting the widest grin Ray’s ever seen him bear. There isn’t a mark on him from what Ray can see, and that damn fucking look is in his eyes again, the one that Ray hates and loves all at once.

“You’re late,” he says.

“Sorry,” Michael at least has the decency to look sheepish about it, if only slightly.

“I’m still mad at you.”

“That’s okay.”

“Are you . . .” Truthfully, the question’s been plaguing him for months now. Since the party. Since the night he’d told Michael everything. Since he fell. “Are you still mad at me?” At first, he isn’t sure Michael heard him. The street they’re on is fairly busy, even for a Sunday, and despite being only ten or twelve feet off the ground, the wind picks up along the roof tops. And through all that silence, the delay in which Michael stares at him, confused, Ray knows he must be. “Gavin said you don’t get mad at people you care about,” he calls across the gap, each word a struggle. “Lindsay, too. They said you only pretend to, or you don’t mean it. But that day, you were really mad. You hated me.”

It takes a minute, an agonizing sixty seconds that Ray totally counts, before Michael responds. “Wow, you’re a fucking idiot.”

“Hey!”

“I don’t get mad at people like Gavin and Lindsay because we’re friends,” Michael explains.

“Oh yeah,” Ray bites out, “I forgot, we _used_ to be friends.”

“Yes, but-”

“So you got mad at me because you hate me?” That’s enough. He doesn’t want to hear anymore, doesn’t want confirmation of all his worst fears.

Even from this distance, he can see the anger brimming in Michael’s eyes. “I got mad at you because I love you, you fucking shithead!” Michael lifts his right hand from his pocket, “And I got this stupid tattoo because I love you! And then I punched your scum faced, blobfish of a father in the face because I fucking love you! I was pushing you because I didn’t think there was any way else I could test if you felt the same since it was always me coming to you!”

Ray feels the world tilt dangerously under him, and he really thinks he should take a couple steps back from the edge of the roof before he gets in trouble again. “You what? Like, friend love? You mean that, right?

“I took you to Geoff’s party, dude!” Michael yells, “Like as a date! I spooned you in your friggen bed while you had a fever! I held your god damn hand in the hospital! Do I have to fucking _spell_ it?!”

“You’re _in love_ with me,” Ray whispers, absolutely stunned. He knows the name for that expression now, the fierce, steady one that begins to cross Michael’s face now, the one that’s been mystifying him for ages. God, he’s an idiot. He’s so stupid. “Wait, you punched my dad?”

Michael groans, “Oh my god. That’s what you took from that? Seriously? Yes, I did. It took forever to track him down, by the way, since he doesn’t live with your mom anymore. And apparently he hardly even shows up for work at his own fucking bar either, he just takes care of things remotely. But yeah, I punched him. Rang his doorbell and knocked him square in the jaw and then ran like hell cause he was surprisingly much bigger than me. It might not have done much good, but it felt good. It made me feel like I could face you again and be proud to do so.”

“Michael . . .”

“But you’re making that kind of fucking difficult as you still haven’t really responded to my epic love confession!” Michael snaps.

A few days ago, Ray couldn’t make the jump. Maybe it was because he was remembering his own failings and fear, or because the faces of his teammates were reflecting this same misgivings. Maybe he simply just hadn’t been ready. Whatever held him back is gone now though, and Ray feels it slipping away from him like he’s shedding a layer of clothing. He paces back a few steps, judges the distance to the edge until he’s sure he’s far enough away to make it. Across the gap, Michael takes a step back as well. “If I make it,” Ray calls, hoping Michael can hear him, “I’ll tell you.”

“Tell me what? You can’t dump me before we’ve even gone out, FYI!”

And then Ray moves. It’s not a full out sprint so much as a steady increase in speed until he’s crossed the distance between his starting point and the edge. He doesn’t jump early this time, waits until the very last step before he leaps, and he thrusts his arms out ahead of him rather than keep them at his sides. This is a trust jump, after all. And he trusts Michael more than anyone.

“Fucking shit!” Michael yelps as Ray crashes into him, sending them stumbling, then full out toppling over onto the second roof, safe and sound and only a little bit bruised. Michael’s arms are around his back, shaking ever so slightly as if he’d actually been afraid that Ray might fall. In contrast, Ray caught hold of Michael by his shoulders, and that had probably been the kicker in putting them off balance. They stare at each other for a heartbeat, and once again, Ray contemplates just kissing him, especially now that he knows Michael wouldn’t resist. He ruins the moment by blurting out, “Alright, let’s see that tattoo!” instead.

Michael laughs and throws his right arm over his eyes, palm up to display the requested ink, his other arm still firmly wrapped around Ray’s back.

Ray leans forward, aware that were Michael to move the hand that they’d be nose to nose. He’s not sure what he expected, but it isn’t the image of a broken beer bottle. There’s a label on the glass, dripping with the bottle’s former contents and bearing only two words upon it, one on either side of the crack. “ _For Ray_.”

“Did you get this just because this was the hand you planned to punch my dad with?” he asks, unimpressed. It seems like a bit of a waste.

“No, I got it as a promise to myself. And to you,” Michael says evenly. “It’s not about your dad. Although yes, I punched him with this hand, and it felt awesome.”

“Before you ran away.”

“Will you shut up? You are ruining all my grand declarations today,” Michael scowls. Ray shivers as he feels Michael’s free hand trace up his spine to the back of his neck, fingers splaying to touch the edge of the scar that’s starting to form on the back of his head. “I got this tattoo for you, so that you can see that I’m completely serious when I say that as long as I have it, I won’t drink.” The breath he was in the middle of taking hitches in Ray’s throat. “Not one drop,” Michael continues. “So that if you ever feel like going out to parties, or pools, or barbeques, or whatever, I can go with you, and you won’t have to be afraid. Not just of me, of anyone.” A sharp flush spreads across Michael’s cheeks as he finishes, “Though now that I’m saying it aloud, it sounds a little stupid. I mean, I don’t even know if-”

“I love the shit out of you,” Ray interrupts.

And then, he really does kiss Michael. It’s rushed, utterly unplanned. He just leans in and does it. When he pulls back, Michael blinks at him, dazed. “Well, that answers that, I guess.”

This time, it’s Michael who makes the first move, using his grip on Ray’s neck to pull him back down. The kiss is softer this time, heated and slow. Ray’s hand finds Michael’s other one, nails tracing the outline of the bottle etched forever into his palm before he tangles their fingers together. He wants to savor every second of this, every slip and glide of their lips together, the way the scorching Texas sun beats down on them, and the fact that Michael doesn’t seem to care that they’re still laying on top of the roof. It’s stupid and perfect and everything Ray had hoped it would be. If he’d once described having Michael’s laugh all to himself like being hit with a sunburst, then kissing him is akin to a supernova, a deep, hot burst of energy right in his core, threatening to swallow him whole. It’s fierce, firm, like the way Michael looks at him, and somehow feels tantalizingly permanent, and if the tattoo is anything to anything to go buy, it probably is. Ray remembers Gavin once saying that Michael was the sort of person who fell in love too fast, and had scoffed that Michael had fallen in love with someone within the span of a month before they’d met. He wonders if that person was him, if he’d just been too stupid to notice all this time.

“Stop thinking,” Michael murmurs.

So Ray does. He lets his mind swim with galaxies, lets his hands wander through Michael’s hair, over his arms, his sides, lets himself breathe in short, thick gasps between heady kisses. Michael’s explorations are far more tentative. He holds Ray’s face between his face for awhile, thumbs rubbing circles over the hollows of his jaw and fingers threading in his hair. When he finally moves, his fingers dance over the bumps of Ray’s spine as if he’s counting them two at a time, rhythmic and careful until he reaches the base and allows his palm to settle on the curve of Ray’s ass. Ray’s hips jerk when he does so, involuntary and harsh, and he breaks the kiss to glare at Michael, who grins innocently in return. Never mind, scratch tentative. Michael is an evil mastermind who sets goals and literally grabs them.

“We are on a _roof_ ,” Ray hisses, flustered as Michael kneads at him with his wandering hand. He’s totally unrepentant if that shit eating smirk is anything to go by.

“You ‘love the shit out of me,’” Michael hums.

Ray’s about to protest that that is hardly a good reason for Michael to have his way with him on a public rooftop, but thankfully, he’s spared from having to do so.

Miles does it for him.

“We pay to use this, you know. If you screw around on it, we’re going to have find a new place.”

Ray yelps, scrambling to a sitting position with Michael close behind. Miles’ head is sticking up over the edge of the roof from where he’s standing on the ladder, his hair sticking up in the wind. “I mean, we support you and stuff,” he goes on, “But really, you can’t do that here. The owner of this building won’t be happy.”

Miles is far enough away that Ray doesn’t have any qualms about whispering into Michael’s ear, “And besides, I wouldn’t let you fuck me up here anyways. It’d be uncomfortable, and we don’t have an condoms or lube.” Michael arches an eyebrow and pats his pocket. Ray digs his fingers into Michael’s arms, “You are a terrible human being,” he says lowly. “The answer is still no. Is the thrill of being caught a fetish of yours or something? Gross.”

Michael rolls his eyes, “No. While we’re on the subject though, I am fond of walls, and you look pretty light.”

Ray flushes as Michael gives him a once over. “I have walls at my place.”

“Observant of you. So do I,” Michael teases.

“Go home!” Miles yells. “If I have to come up there and shoo you two off like a pair of cats in heat then I’m taking pictures and posting it on the site!”

Ray ignores him. “I’m fine with dates for right now though,” he says, his forehead leaning against Michael’s. “Maybe some video games at my place, or _Game of Thrones_ night at Burnie's. I need to buy a swimsuit before I go to the pool, though.”

Smiling, Michael murmurs, “That sounds fantastic.”

“Gavin’s coming with the Phantom in five!” Miles calls.

“Shut up!” Michael shouts. “Go fuck yourself! We’re having a moment!”

“This is public-”

Michael growls, dislodging himself from Ray’s grip and raising to stalk towards the ladder. “Excuse me,” he says calmly, “I have to go. I hope the local jail allows conjugal visits, because I’m about to _publicly_ rend all of Miles’ limbs off.” He leans down, kissing Ray once more, and then he takes off in the direction of the ladder, shouting when Miles squeals in terror. “Get back here, dickhead! At least have the guts to look death in the eye! When Gavin gets here he can film me tearing your guts out in slow motion!”

Left alone on the rooftop, Ray runs his tongue over his lips, relishing in the heat and taste left behind before he gives in to a long and open laugh.

**Author's Note:**

> The scene near the beginning of the fic where Michael and Ray examine the creepy stain in Ray's kitchen is based on a scene from Fruits Basket. Just an FYI.
> 
> ANYWHO, just in case anyone was wondering, there's a few scenes between Ray's failed trust jump and Michael's return that ended up being cut from the final draft. They were mostly Lindsay/Gavin interacting with Ray, and the dialogue in it ended up clashing with some of the other themes in the fic, so they were trashed rather last minute. I didn't have enough time to think of new scenes, as the decision to cut the old ones happened, like, this morning. So the ending might seem a bit rushed. Oops. 
> 
> Similarly, the reason that most of the art was made for the first half or so of the fic is because I wrote the rest of it well after the deadline for writers. Cause I suck. My eternal gratitude, love, and apologies to TeamRTist for putting up with my shit.
> 
> Also, obviously, any depictions of child abuse in this fic are FICTIONAL.


End file.
